Brown targeting top 10 in Chicago

Will Brown will join Shane van Gisbergen in the NASCAR Cup Series field on the streets of Chicago and he is hopeful of scoring a top 10.

After getting a taste of Sonoma last year, Brown is following the footsteps of van Gisbergen by taking on the NASCAR Cup Series Chicago race as the reigning Supercars champion.

This weekend the Triple Eight Supercars driver will swap his #1 Camaro for a #13 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet.

It is the same team he took on Sonoma with last year, where he got caught up in an incident and finished 31st, but that masked some of his speed.

As he turns his attention to Chicago, he is not realistically thinking of repeating SVG’s magic, but hopes his street smarts can turn him into a frontrunner.

“You want to go well. It’s hard putting expectations on it because you saw what Shane did his first year, but then from there, it’s not just been easy wins, you know what I mean? Even on road courses,” said Brown on the NASCAR Stacking Pennies podcast.

“I felt like we were having a good run in Sonoma until we had things go wrong in qualifying. We were third in practice, and then we had a tough qualifying.

“I’m probably not going to put a number on it just yet, but if we’re in that top 10 to start with, we would be very happy, but it is an unknown for us.”

Braking technique is always something the Americans marvel at when Supercars stars come to their playground.

Brown also revealed that former Triple Eight boss Rolan Dane is the secret behind a key technique change.

“I was 18 in the Dunlop Series and was left-foot braking then, and he (Roland Dane) sort of recognised me,” the current Triple Eight driver recalled.

“He said he would not sign me unless I right-foot braked.

“There has only been one person who was quite successful left foot braking, and that was Fabian Coulthard.

“Shane does an amazing job at what he does, modulating the clutch, but pretty much everyone is a right foot braker.

“I have looked at a lot of footage from Chicago last year and when they (NASCAR drivers) go for the down change you can hear the rears chattering.

“Hopefully you can use the clutch to modulate that and allow you to have more stability into the corner and better tyre life.”

Although Brown noted his vast experience on the Supercars street circuits will be to his advantage, he fears intricacies such as the differences on pit road can count against him.

“Chicago is probably very similar to five of our race meetings. We’ve got Gold Coast, which is super tight, probably even tighter than Chicago then Adelaide,” he said.

“We run a lot of those road course, street course type of events, so it’s something we’re pretty familiar with over there.

“The big thing for me is to not get a penalty on pit road.

“For me we press a button that limits us to 40km/h and the crew do not run out in front of the car.

“I saw someone got a penalty by clipping three boxes and coming across too ealry so that is something that could catch me out quite easily.

“Pit lane will be the tough part not to make mistakes and lose time.”

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