Prodrive Racing (Australia) will continue to chase the ultimate setup in tomorrow’s final practice session with all drivers confident there’s more to be gained from each of their cars. After sustaining damage to the rear of the Mega Fuels FG X with five minutes remaining in the opening practice session, Jason Bright returned to complete practice two, pleased with the cars performance. He and teammate Cameron Waters were both unable to complete a strong lap under traffic in the dying stages of practice two, however both insist their direction is positive ahead of practice tomorrow. Chaz Mostert has remained upbeat despite not meeting his own standards in practice, insisting he is up for the challenge of returning to the top of the time sheet. Mark Winterbottom also agreed that while their car was strong at the beginning of the second session, further experimentation with changes took them backwards towards the end of the 45 minute session. Work overnight will be important for all four cars take the team to where they know they can be. Times once again proved to be tight at Hidden Valley with the field separated by just 1.2 seconds.
Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 12th – 1m06.90s
Practice 2: 12th – 1m06.42s
“Yeah it’s not really where we want it to be. We went backwards in that last session and the changes turned it into a pretty ugly car. It wasn’t fun to drive. I’m pretty confident that we can get it to where I know it can be. It was actually pretty good coming into the second session so if we can take it back to that and work from there I think we’ll be okay. We’ll have a look at it all overnight and see where we can get it to tomorrow.”Cameron Waters – #6 Monster Energy PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 10th – 1m06.83s
Practice 2: 15th – 1m06.59s
“It wasn’t too bad of a day. Practice one we were 10th and we had our issues but we fixed most of them for practice two. The car was really good on old tyres but we didn’t really get the gain on the greens because I caught traffic on my fast lap. I think we’re a lot better than where we are so we’ll keep tuning and see where we end up tomorrow.”Chaz Mostert – #55 Supercheap Auto PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 5th – 1m06.75s
Practice 2: 14th – 1m06.50s
“It was a pretty interesting day. We’re not going to look into the times too much; we know that the car’s probably a fair way away from where we want it to be when we put tyres on. Still reasonably happy because I know what we can try to do to fix it and what we probably need for tomorrow but it’s not too bad for a Friday. We’ll see how we roll out tomorrow. We’ve got a bit of time to make up to try and catch the front guys but we’re up for the challenge.”
Jason Bright – #56 MEGA Bulk Fuels PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 18th – 1m07.16s
Practice 2: 17th – 1m06.68s
“I’m really happy with the car. Obviously had a bit of a slip up at the end of practice one there but thankfully the guys were able to get it all back together for the final session today. I wasn’t really happy with the first set of tyres that we had on it in that last session but I still felt that the car was strong at the end; I just didn’t get a lap together. I was really happy with the car in practice one. I just felt like I didn’t maximise it on that last set of tyres. We expected to get another run but we ran out of time so I’m a bit disappointed with where we ended up today but I feel like we’ve got a pretty good package for the weekend.”
Tim Edwards – Team Principal:
“We had a few challenges today but we’re not far off. Each of the drivers knows what they want to look at and we think we have the answers so it wasn’t a terrible day. A credit to the Mega Racing and Supercheap Auto crews today. They did a great job to get car 56 back out on the track for practice two and that meant that we didn’t lose ground so they all did a great job. There’s still a whole practice session to play out tomorrow and we’ll be making the most of it.”
1) Fabian Coulthard – DJR Team Penske: 1060
2) Jamie Whincup – Triple Eight: 1056
3) Scott McLaughlin – DJR Team Penske: 1032
4) Shane van Gisbergen – Triple Eight: 1023
5) Chaz Mostert – Supercheap Auto Racing: 861
7) Mark Winterbottom – The Bottle-O Racing Team: 798
10) Cameron Waters – Monster Energy Racing: 703
21) Jason Bright – MEGA Racing: 429
1) DJR Team Penske: 2127
2) Triple Eight: 2079
3) Prodrive Racing Australia: 1536
