Erebus engineer Moore on season start
Erebus Motorsport race engineer Tom Moore has touched on why he is pleased with Jack Le Brocq’s start and why Brodie Kostecki’s absence didn’t make much of a difference for him.
Moore is in the middle of his fourth full-time Supercars season as race engineer on car #9 but first without Will Brown.
With Brown moving to Triple Eight, Le Brocq is now the driver working directly with Moore.
But Erebus unexpectedly found itself fielding two new driver-engineer partnerships with reigning champion Kostecki missing the first two rounds.
Whilst much was made about the team missing Kostecki’s feedback with set-up direction, Moore explained to Scott Pye’s new Apex Hunters United Podcast that it did not play a big role on his side of the garage, with the engineer’s focus on building his connection with Le Brocq.
“I don’t think we missed out on a lot because I still had to develop the dynamic with Jack about how likes the car and likes it tuned,” Moore said.
“We have definitely found things that are slightly different this year to last year.
“(It was a) bigger loss for Jack himself because in a two-car team you are constantly overlaying to the other car and for that to be the champion would have been extremely beneficial to him.
“Would have it changed our results this year? Probably not.”
Although both Erebus cars have been consistently inside the top 10, the reigning champions are yet to record a win, podium or pole in its title defence.
But the team still sits a solid third in the teams championship behind the dominant Triple Eight and Penrite Racing.
Moore defended the team’s start, stating that Le Brocq would be sitting well inside the top five of the championship if it wasn’t for a costly DNF from wheel to wheel contact at the Grand Prix finale.
“It is not as bad as it looks from the outside,” Moore responded.
“Sometimes when a new driver comes you see a teething period but Will has jumped into Triple Eight and gone all guns blazing.
“There has obviously been a little bit of disruption in our development on car #99 side of things because we started adjusting it to suit Todd (Hazelwood) and now we have to adjust it again to suit Brodie.
“If we hadn’t had the DNF with Jack at the Grand Prix we would have been fourth in the drivers championship at the moment.
“If you offered me that at the start of the year i thought it would have been great.”
Image: Peter Norton EPIC Sports Photography
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