Hill turns better qualifying into a result
Cam Hill enjoyed his second-best racing day of the year, finishing ninth in the Sunday race at Darwin. Driving for Matt Stone Racing, which took its first series win in Darwin last year, Hill and teammate Percat were competitive all weekend.
Aside from a fifth in the opening race of the season, Hill’s best other results were a brace of 11th-place finishes.
“It’s nice to be back in the top 10,” he said. “We’ve been building to getting results like this more consistently. A few things probably stopped us from doing that, but qualifying is the main thing.
“If you qualify at the front, you can race. It is a massively qualifying class. I didn’t do what I needed to do on Saturday, and we were down in the battle pack, whereas today, it was running pretty comfortably at the front.
“We thought we had a pretty good plan, and unfortunately, when we were doing our pit stop, Andre was serving his penalty, and I had to give way to him. That probably cost us 2-3 seconds, and we lost some track position, and once that was gone, it cost us a potential top-five finish.
“You know, it’s funny how you want that top 10, then suddenly it could have been more. But you know, I’m happy with today. It’s good for the team as well. Both cars were in the top 10.
“We’re going to get our time in the sun soon, I think. My boys have been working hard all year, and they put together a nice race car, so I’m sort of keen to get them a few more results.”
Hill is in his second season of the main game and believes he is improving with each round.
“I look back at where I was 12 months ago and, you know, you think you were good, but you sort of go, ‘Oh, yeah, I had a lot to learn’. I feel I’m at a much better level this year, but it’s so close. There’s a lot of guys who, if they do everything right, they can be on the podium. I think that’s not far away for us.
“We’re a small team, but we’re pushing the top end of town. It’s really cool.
“I think what Gen 3 has done is it’s just given everyone an equal opportunity now and it’s up to the driver and the team on the day to get it right.”
He added that he didn’t this round was much different to the most recent rounds, it just all came together better in qualifying.
“I’ve sort of felt like we’ve been getting pretty close for a while now. We obviously had a great showing at the start of the year, but it’s been a bit of a rocky road since.
“In Perth I had good speed, but bad starts. This weekend starts a bit better and we got better results as well. That’s it.”
Hill is 16th in the Championship, and Matt Stone Racing is sixth in the Teams’ Championship. Teammate Nick Percat is fourth.
