BJR takes confidence from two days on track with Gen3
Brad Jones Racing has put all their four Gen3 Camaros through their paces at Winton Motor Raceway during their first test day.
The test was run back-to-back with the cars’ shakedown, where the team was pleased with the cars’ initial performance.
BJR is now buoyed by the confidence from having two full days of track time behind them heading to the all-in test session at Sydney Motorsport Park (February 22nd).
Drivers, Andre Heimgartner, Bryce Fullwood, Macauley Jones, and Jack Smith worked through individual programs in each of their Chevrolet Camaros.
While there were some niggling issues identified, there was nothing that wasn’t expected of brand new builds.
The BJR crew also ran the Super2 ZB Commodore over the day, with Lochie Dalton clocking in some laps in his second outing in that car.
The Camaros will have their first hit out in anger at the Thrifty Newcastle 500 on March 10-12.
What they had to say…
Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"I had a pretty productive day, the car rolled out a bit nicer today which was good. Did some tuning stuff but the track got a bit hot so what we were able to learn was a bit limited for the rest of the day. We got some idea on some setup direction so we can go away and come together with it over the next couple of days - what we’ve learnt, some different setup ideas and philosophies and come back and try and put them together. But overall a successful day.
I think we’re pretty speedy, it’s always hard to know at test days like this - what tyre you’re running what everyone else is running but I’m pretty happy with how we’re sitting and how the car feels so we'll find out exactly where we are when we get to Sydney.”
Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
“I think I’m a lot more comfortable in the car, ergonomically. I think everyone’s got the same story- obviously we’ve all got old tyres of varying ages so it’s a little bit hard to compare to really know where we’re at. Come the Sydney test when everyone puts new tyres on the car I think we’ll have a better idea of where we’re actually at. We’ve played around with it a lot today and whilst it’s different it’s still similar-ish to our old car - a lot of it’s still the same, it’s the same tyre, still a locked diff. A little bit of a battle in some parts of the day but I still feel like there were times where we had something that wasn’t too bad. I’m thankful that we’ve had these two days in the car and am excited for Sydney to see where we stand.”
Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
“It wasn’t too bad. It was up and down to be honest - hot, greasy and pretty tricky to work out what you’ve got most of the time but the cars are cool, had two days of solid running and we haven’t really had any fault so I can’t complain.
"Everything is different, I think the Supercar fundamentals are still there but I think everything visually and when you’re sitting inside you can’t really see as much out of them as the old ones but you can definitely tell you’re in a different car."
Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
“I was just trying to get myself comfortable with the driving style verse the tyres that we’ve got on it at the moment, it’s quite a big balance change between the hard and the soft and the super softs. So did a fair bit of running on hards again. Really just tried some tuning stuff, we’re still just working it all out as a group, just trying to learn everything we can. But the driving style is something that I’m just trying to work on to get my head around and maximising the lap time verse the longevity of the tyre as well.
(On going through the practice starts) “The sequence is somewhat the same and you sort of get the same feeling which is kind of nice the torque of the engine is pretty strong, managed to not bog it but the clutch is so different. The bite point is very small in these cars so to try and modulate the clutch and the wheel spin is quite difficult actually. So it’s actually a big difference.”
Lochie Dalton
Super2 Driver, #43 ZB Commodore
“It was pretty good, it was very very warm here. It was warm in the car, the track was a little bit different today it was very slimy and you almost get a false sensation of what was going on out there but it was good. We went through a lot of setup changes, did a lot of race runs and sort of explored out of our toolbox a little bit on different changes and just going over everything we can just so when we do have that question mark on something we know what the answer is.
"Second time out in the ZB, the first test we mainly just tried to get as fast as we could and today was about race pace and questions over setup.”