Brad Jones Racing takes two podiums in Darwin
Sunday of the Darwin Triple Crown saw the Brad Jones Racing team jump to the podium in both races.
R&J Batteries driver Andre Heimgartner will add the unique Indigenous Round trophies to his tally this season, which is now up to four.
Race 15
Heimgartner started the final race from the front row in second and made life difficult for the Matt Stone Racing driver beside him.
He stayed on the tail of Jack Le Brocq during the opening laps.
However he didn’t have enough to overhaul him and he had to settle for second as the chequered flag was shown.
Darwin born Bryce Fullwood (#14 Middy’s Electrical) meanwhile opted to an aggressive strategy with his crew changing all four tyres on his Camaro.
Fullwood charged through on the fresher rubber to take 11th.
Macauley Jones made the most of his race after being held up in traffic after his pit stop, he came across the line in 13th
Jones remains positive overall with the speed of the car.
Jack Smith had a rough day, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time at a few points during the race.
The SCT Logistics Camaro saw the flag in 22nd.
Race 14
The first race of the day saw three BJR cars in the top ten with Heimgartner finishing on the podium.
Qualifying went the team’s way with Heimgartner starting off the front row, however the Kiwi wasn’t able to fend off SVG late in the race and finished third.
Jones stopped early after starting out of 12th, the Pizza Hut driver’s patience paid off and his long run on his second set of tyre took him home in seventh.
Fullwood followed Jones across the line having employed the opposite strategy, the hometown boy only stopped for fresh rubber with a handful of laps to go and finished eighth.
The #4 unfortunately sustained damage very early in the race when Smith was stuck in a concertina of cars.
The hit damaged the body work on the car just enough to hinder cooling to the engine, ending the 23-year-old’s race.
Next up for the Repco Supercars Championship is the Townsville 500 (July 07-09).
What our drivers had to say…
Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"Had some consistency and some good speed in the qualifying, which really set up the day and managed to have decent race pace as well and maximized what we had. So pretty good any day, or any weekend, you can get two podiums. It's really good. We lacked a little bit of outright speed initially, in the last race which meant we couldn't fight 100% for the win, but we're putting pressure on and did what we could but awesome weekend overall."
Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
"Good day for us. I feel like I probably didn't do the best job at maximizing qualifying. I think the car was a bit speedier than where I was able to get it today. A little bit dirty myself there but the race car was really good. Just unfortunate we were put back into the battle pack a little bit. The first race was good to get a top 10 and the three BJR cars in the top eight was awesome for us. I think the last race we had quite good speed and we passed a lot of cars unfortunately we got a bit tangled up in races and got sheep stationed at the start but it's still an awesome weekend for us to get back to 11th. That last race was awesome to see Andre do so well. And it's an awesome weekend for our team. So yeah, couldn't be more happy to have this kind of weekend here at home in front of the home crowd."
Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
"I think the race car we have is quite fast but we just couldn't quite seem to get everything sorted. We got taken out a couple of times and were involved in incidents. That was really unfortunate and just couldn't quite get through the races unscathed this weekend. So it was a shame. But the other three cars had good pace. And Andre was really fast for two podiums, so good weekend for the team just didn't go to plan for me."
Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
"Much better qualifying today. I think we were pretty happy with that. There is still a little bit of time in it here and there but the field is so close, it's pretty crazy and the guys did a good job overnight to tune her up. Then the race, we moved forward in the first one which was really good. We had a an offset strategy, to pit pretty early and hold on. The car was really strong at that point. It held on it was the tyres really well. The second race sort of got a bit held up there out of the pit stop and then not finding it super easy to pass at this place at the moment. So overheated the tyres but but moved forward, which is really good. And so overall, Donners [Andrew Donnelly, Engineer] did an awesome job chatting to me on the radio ."