IRWIN Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and DEWALT Racing’s Scott Pye enjoyed Team 18’s best day out of the season at Sydney Motorsport Park today in Races 8 and 9 of the Supercars Championship.
Winterbottom scored a trio of top-ten finishes this weekend and secured the team’s first top-five result with fifth in Race 9, while Pye climbed up several positions in both races with results of 11th and 12th.
Both drivers struggled for qualifying with the increased ambient temperature earlier in the day, but were confident in their race pace and tyre strategy to move forward in every race.
Winterbottom improved from 12th to eight in Race 8 and 11th to fifth in Race 9, while Pye showed similar growth to climb from 17th to 11th in Race 8 and 16th to 12th in Race 9.
The drivers and engineers took their learnings from Saturday’s Race 7 into Sunday’s races, as the DEWALT Racing side of the garage elected to conserve their tyre bank and put on four tyres during their stop in the final race.
Both Winterbottom and Pye hailed the whole event a great success for Supercars, and lauded the race formats as exciting for drivers and equally challenging for teams.
Winterbottom particularly expressed his pleasure to see mixed results throughout the weekend with the smaller teams in the field able to fight for a result against the series heavyweights at the front of the field.
The IRWIN Racing and DEWALT Racing Commodores will head back to the team’s Mount Waverley headquarters with confidence in their package and momentum in their performance before the next event of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at Winton Motor Raceway on 18/19 July.
