Heimgartner rewards BJR with second podium in 2023
Brad Jones Racing and Andre Heimgartner celebrate a terrific podium effort on Saturday in Tasmania.
Heimgartner started Race 10 out of fifth but was promptly promoted to third after an incident between two other drivers at the hairpin early in the race.
An immaculate pit stop from the #8/#14 crew saw the quick Kiwi then put into second in the corrected order as he left the lane.
That’s where the R&J Batteries driver stayed at the chequred flag, his second podium effort of the season so far in his 100th Supercars round.
Team-mate Bryce Fullwood in the Middy’s Electrical Camaro will look across the garage at Heimgartner to make hopefully strides for tomorrow’s two races.
Fullwood’s qualifying didn’t go to plan with the Darwin born driver’s best lap putting him in 21st, he moved ahead in the race to 19th.
Jack Smith in the SCT Logistics Camaro also moved forward in the race coming across the line in 17th, unfortunately losing a few spots in the closing laps but he remains upbeat about the rest of the weekend.
Meanwhile Macauley Jones in the Pizza Hut Racing Camaro will be doing homework overnight to bounce back tomorrow, having started 25th Jones finished the race in 22nd.
Sunday’s action will see all BJR drivers compete across two races, with qualifying leading the on track activity at Symmons Plains starting at 9:50 AEST.
What our drivers had to say…
Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"[The setup] is back to how I like driving the car and what we used mostly last year. So we got a bit misled from AGP stuff and that sort of tanked Perth a bit. But it's great to come here and have some good speed obviously to get second and some good race pace, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow."
Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
“We had a tough qualifying. I think coming out of second practice I didn't feel too bad. If we sort of really hit the nail on the head, I thought we could have been maybe just outside the ten or something like that for qualifying. But we didn't quite get it right in qualifying and we really shot ourselves in the foot starting at the back and unfortunately, we just didn't have a whole lot of race pace. Congratulations to Andre, it was awesome for him to get on the podium. So fortunately for us we can look into him and his car and we've got some good data to look at.”
Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
“It was an up and down day. We had reasonably strong pace all day we just kind of didn't quite get it right in quali, we had a few little mishaps but it was okay. The pace in the race was alright too, strategy was really good, stop was good. We just unfortunately lost a couple of spots in the last couple of laps which was disappointing but we did move forward in the race so it's overall not a bad day.”
Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
“It was a tough day out there today, the car has some serious race pace but we just need to capitalise on it. It’s difficult to navigate in traffic and that sets us back a bit. We’ll work on it overnight and look at the data to see where we can make gains.”