Sunshine might have greeted the competitors at the opening sessions of the 2022 REPCO Supercars Championship but the Sydney Motorsport Park track was anything but sunshine and lollipops with the surface going through more seasons in one day than Melbourne.
The first session of the day was topped Shell V-Power Racing Teams’ Anton De Pasquale who commented about the changing track conditions.
“Hard tricky day, the weather and track conditions were always changing. We’ll look at some things and try to get a bit of an idea and wait to see what tomorrow brings.
“I ran a bit wide and grabbed some grass where it was all wet.”
“We’ll see what tomorrow brings with the weather and the track with the changes in conditions, which is mixing it up.”
Meanwhile over in the Red Bull Ampol Racing garage, Broc Feeney rejoiced in the changing conditions due to being able to run his car under the various conditions.
“Today was actually a pretty good day, even though it’s so hard to tell what’s going on with our car because of the weather and the track changing all of the time. We got a bit of wet running under our belts at the start, and some slick action towards the end of Practice 1, and then a pretty dry session in Practice 2.”
“In the second session, we were in the top five for most of the time. I didn’t get my run in at the end, but I’m happy with how everything went, and I think I’m going to sleep pretty well tonight. I made some adjustments to the car to get me a little more comfortable, and I’m feeling a lot more at home because of it, which is good when you’ve got 300-kilometer races this weekend.”
“Although we made a couple of changes, it’s pretty difficult to understand what’s going on, but overall, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. I’m keen as for tomorrow. I’m taking one session at a time, and hopefully we have a good qualifying session tomorrow, fingers crossed we make the shootout and hopefully that will put us into a good position heading into the race.”
His team mate Shane van Gisbergen meanwhile wasn’t so complimentary to the track or the weather lamenting over the varied conditions inside and outside of the car
“It was hard today because every lap was variable. We had some ideas over the break that we really wanted to implement, but we couldn’t try them or even verify them. We tried some big changes in the second session, but unfortunately, I just couldn’t feel them because the track is so different – more than the car.”
“Although you don’t learn much in the ways of setting up your car in these conditions, you really learn as a driver, and that’s going to really help us later in the weekend. Every other driver has the same problem, so you just have to try and manage it better then everyone else. The humidity also hits you inside the car – it’s hot as hell which is weird.”
PRACTICE 1 – Top 10
Anton De Pasquale 1:33.2091
Mark Winterbottom +0.1942
Chaz Mostert +0.3351
Nick Percat +0.4845
Scott Pye +0.5202
David Reynolds +0.6029
Will Brown +0.647
Lee Holdsworth +0.7111
Andre Heimgartner +0.7221
Broc Feeney +0.8619
PRACTICE 2 – Top 10
Chaz Mostert 1:32.5356
Cam Waters +0.0704
Will Brown +0.1284
Scott Pye +0.1987
David Reynolds +0.2196
Shane van Gisbergen +0.2653
Will Davison +0.4299
Anton De Pasquale +0.5385
Jack Le Brocq +0.5683
Lee Holdsworth +0.5765
SCHEDULE – Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight, 4-6 March 2022
SATURDAY
Qualifying (Race 1) – 2:45pm (15 minutes)
Top 10 Shootout – 4:30pm
Race 1 – 7:10pm (77 laps)
TV Times, Fox: 12:15pm to 9:45pm AEDT
TV Times, 7Mate: 4:30pm to 9:30pm AEDT
SUNDAY
Qualifying (Race 2) – 10:50am (15 minutes)
Top 10 Shootout – 12:05pm
Race 2 – 2:30pm (77 laps)
TV Times, Fox: 8:00am to 6:00pm AEDT
TV Times, Channel 7: 12:00pm to 5:00pm AEDT
