Townsville Driver Quotes

DRIVERS’ VIEW
Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
“Townsville is a different sort of track. We’re back into street circuit form and a stop start type of car instead of a fast, flowing track. You’ve just got to stay confident. Back yourself, back the team and go forward. From a form guide point of view, Darwin doesn’t replicate results in Townsville so we’ve just got to keep going. We’ve got good people. We’ve just got to try and make some new bits, set a new direction and a new sort of track will also hopefully gives us results. In 2015 we had the double win on Saturday and Sunday. Last year we were on the podium and got a pole so it’s been a good track for us but you need the car to be underneath you to get the results and I think we can do that.” 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 15th – 1m13.50s
Practice 2: 4th – 1m12.53s
“Today was pretty good. It’s nice to be a bit further up there. The car is feeling okay. We’re really just chasing turn, that’s the main thing we’re struggling with at the moment. On the lap where we went p1 it felt really good but we made a change after that which took us backwards a little bit so we’ll reverse that overnight I think, see if we can make any other improvements and come out firing tomorrow.” 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Qualifying: 6th – 1m12.42s
Race 13: 3rd
“It was a good day. To get back on the podium is really good. It’s been a tough year. You need results to keep the motivation levels up because my car in particular has had a really heavy work load this year. You think about that stuff when you cross the line, it’s not just a podium. It’s awesome for the guys who work on my car in particular, spraying champagne on them felt like a win which was cool. We’ve now got momentum and we’ll try and keep going with it which will be good.” 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Qualifying: 3rd – 1m12.30s
Top-10 Shootout: 5th – 1m12.42s
Race 14: 4th
“It was a good day. To have four cars in the top-10 shootout is a massive thing. Although they didn’t end up first-second-third-fourth it’s still a massive achievement to get four cars in. It’s nice to see the whole team going forward, not just one driver. It was a pretty positive weekend but I thought fourth was probably the best result I was going to get with the car that I had. We strategized well, played to our strengths got the position I thought we’d probably get. Can’t complain, a third and a fourth is not a bad weekend. You don’t give up, you keep trying and we’ll get there.”