Top ten finish for BJR under lights in Sydney
A pole position and a top ten finish highlights Brad Jones Racing’s Saturday at the Sydney Supernight.
Bryce Fullwood led the BJR pack home in the 200km night race, finishing in eighth while team-mate Andre Heimgartner suffered steering rack issues through the 51-lapper that made his night difficult.
Heimgartner had started the race from pole position, his first for the Albury outfit and third of his career so far.
The R&J Batteries driver was the man to beat in qualifying, setting the benchmark early in the final stanza and went on to better it on his second run with a 1.29.3447.
While the quick Kiwi lined up first on the grid, it was short lived with Heimgartner losing out immediately on the start.
The strategy call from the team meant that while Heimgartner battled with the steering problems, projections still had him finishing up the order.
When a Safety Car was called late in the race, that dashed all chances and Heimgartner could only recover then to 14th.
Middy’s Electrical charger, Fullwood took to the sixth on the grid and like Heimgartner didn’t enjoy the best of race starts.
The Darwin-native dropped a handful of positions and was in a fairly fierce battle in the early stages of race, before being able to pick up eighth in the closing laps.
Jack Smith in the SCT Logistics Camaro meanwhile had a stellar start, grabbing four positions as the field was released under lights from 25th.
Smith diced with those ahead and was in a battle for 18th just before the chequered flag, finishing in 19th.
Macauley Jones was running as high as 15th through the race but was turned around by another driver at the Safety Car restart and from there, his night was done.
Jones in the Pizza Hut Racing Camaro came home in 22nd.
All four of the BJR cars are back out on track in Sydney tomorrow for the second race of the weekend, first up will be qualifying at 12:35.
What our drivers had to say…
Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"It was just unfortunate, had a good starting position and then the car wasn't particularly fast at the start and went back a little bit and then steering started to fade in and out. With 25 laps to go, it completely shit itself and we just managed to hang on for 14th. So it was pretty good considering."
"It's good for the team to get pole position finally and it's good to start right at the front again. So it's good that everyone had speed - Bryce had speed, all the cars at some point had good speed."
Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
"Pretty busy day today. I was pretty happy with where we got to. In qualifying we didn't quite maximize but you know, we started sixth which was awesome. All of our cars are pretty fast, Andre was on pole which was awesome. Then I had about the worst start I think I've ever had. I screwed up royally, which was really annoying. And I had to pass my way back forward again. Unfortunately, the race car wasn't as good as probably what we've had in recent rounds. So we need to do a bit of homework on that tonight. But I feel like it wasn't a clean race at all, but to come away with another top 10, in eighth I'm pretty happy with that. So looking forward to tomorrow if we can keep the quali speed we've got and work on the race car then hopefully we'll be right"
Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
"Today was a long day to be honest. Started with practice which was up and down we made some good gains with the car and qualifying was ultimately very unsuccessful we ended up with to two track limit strikes, so didn't get any lap in qualifying, which was disappointing. So we started last but raced quite well. Didn't have bad speed and the race was enjoyable. There's a lot going on and it was good fun. I thought we race well and team did a good job to recover to where we did "
Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
"We didn't have a great race today. We did have really good tyre life, which was great. But unfortunately we had a bad start and then at the Safety Car restart just got turned around and then that was all she wrote. We'll look at the data overnight and have a chat with the engineers. We'll make some really good changes overnight and hopefully it comes out pretty strong in the morning."