Clarkie’s Supercars Notepad – Friday, Townsville
It was a strange day in Townsville, with clouds and the occasional spot of rain when we usually embrace the sunshine. The track started slightly slower than expected, especially given the cloud cover, and ticket sales were up on previous years.
The headline act for Friday was Tickford Racing after claiming the first spots in the first session and then first and fourth in the second. Team owner Rod Nash, who missed Darwin, said it was not his return to the racetrack with the team that was the reason before declaring, “It’s Friday, I hate Fridays”.
“We recognise that Gen3 is delivering on parity and the closeness of the field, and everyone has a chance to be up the front. It means you don’t have to be out by much to be well down the order,” he said. “The set-up window on these cars is also much tighter than Gen2, so we just need to keep working on our processes.”
Charlie Nash in his Toyota 86 at Townsville.
He said Tickford was running eight cars for the weekend, three development series cars and three in the upgraded Toyota 86 series (sorry, the Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia GR Cup), including one for his 16-year-old son Charlie, who qualified 13th in his first outing.
“I’m trying to keep the dad syndrome out of it and let the engineers do their job,” he said of trying to remain hands-off.
***
Triple Eight Shares
On the weekend when her partner – Shane van Gisbergen – triumphantly returns to the streets of Chicago, rumours have Jess Dane selling her shares in the Triple Eight entity that runs Red Bull Ampol Racing. The team would not discuss it, but we’ll keep our nose down and try to suss it out.
***
One side of the Team 18 garage was OK
Team 18 was ‘OK on one side of the garage and struggling a bit on the other’, according to Team Principal Adrian Burgess. “Frosty pulled a lap out,” he said of the quick lap that landed the three-time Townsville winner in third. “Our race car is good, but we’ve got to find something for qualifying.”
He said the cars started similarly in set-up and then drifted apart on set-ups, but when we spoke, it was too early to tell what would happen with the set-ups for tomorrow.
***
One-word answer while waiting for the Grand Poobah
Peter Xiberras was succinct when asked about his day and delivered a one-word response: “Shit”. But with all the Triple Eight cars lacking Darwin’s dominant speed, he said the engineers would sit down and work out what to do, with guidance from the ‘grand poobah’.
***
A new steering rack
Less than a couple of hours after Auto Action ran the story on next year’s steering rack changes, Matt Stone Racing put a new-spec Tickford rack into car #4. Otherwise, a team spokesperson said it was “all good; we’ve just got to find some pace”.
The tough day comes after the team extended its deal with Nick Percat until the end of 2027.
***
A case of white shorts
Just when we thought the first cracks were starting to appear in the mighty Red Bull Ampol Racing machine, Mark Dutton deflated the balloon of optimism for the other teams. The stray team member doing duties in white shorts, rather than the mandatory Red Bull blue, was an apprentice pulled in through one of the team’s sponsors as part of a scheme it has been running for years.
At each round, businesses like New Holland reward some of their apprentices with a weekend working at the crack outfit.
“They don’t get to do any performance related work like changing tyres, but they a part of what we are doing. It is great after a weekend when you say to them, ‘You’ve just won Bathurst’ or something similar.”
We’ll keep an eye out for the colour of the shorts tomorrow.
***
Mostert back on the pace
Walkinshaw Andretti United bounced back from its Darwin qualifying disappointment to end the day with Chaz Mostert in fifth place. Technical boss Carl Faux was particularly upbeat at the end of the day.
“We were OK in the races in Darwin; we just lacked one lap speed. It is something to do with the Super Soft that doesn’t work with our set-up philosophy, but we’ll keep working on that. There’s also been some noise over tyre batches, but we aren’t buying that.”
On his two cars, he said Ryan Wood apologised for a mistake on his fast lap but that he is ‘happier than the timesheet suggests’. Mostert was having some issues around tyre phasing.
Like Tickford, he’s also running cars in Super2 and Toyota 86 this weekend.
***
And… Barry’s back
We’ll close this notepad with Erebus Motorsport and the return of Barry Ryan from hunting the Loch Ness Monster – which he claims to have found – and that the wheels did not fall off the Erebus wagon, much to the chagrin of some. Jack Le Brocq was second fastest at the end of the day, and Brodie Kostecki was eighth.
