Melbourne AGP

17 April 2018

Frosty's thoughts

DRIVERS’ VIEW

No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
“In the past we’ve used the Grand Prix as sort of a test where we tried out some different or new things, but now that it counts for points we have to take a completely different approach. I expect it will be a challenging weekend, whoever rolls of the truck fast will be in the best position, but having the same car for three years there we should have a good idea where we can find speed and hopefully that will play to our advantage. We swept the weekend three years ago but haven’t won since, so hopefully we can get back to the front this weekend.”

Practice 1: 26th, 1m59.11s
Practice 2: 10th, 1m56.16s
Race 3 Quali: 15th, 1m56.15s
Race 4 Quali: 10th, 1m55.81s
“We had a few dramas throughout the day, and just didn’t get it right for qualifying. It was a little bit frustrating, you make changes to make the car better, not make it slower, and we had the latter today. We lost all rear grip, and it’s a track where you need lots of rear grip, so we had what we had. 15th was disappointing, and tenth was about as good as we could get, so it’ll be a hard day tomorrow but we’ll tune it up overnight, have two more cracks at quali tomorrow and go for a better run in the race.” 

Race 5 Quali: 12th, 1m56.01s

Race 6 Quali: 14th, 1m56.21s

Race 3 Start: 15th

Race 3 Finish: 14th
“I thought we made the car better in the race. I had a good first lap and made it up as far as 11th before I pitted. We caught a big group of cars ahead and were passing people fairly comfortably. I felt like we had good tyre life, and we pitted, which would have worked out if everyone came in with us, but only Will (Davison) and (Craig) Lowndes pitted with us. We had very good tyre life compared to them, but the rest of the field didn’t follow. I think if we were on with everyone else’s strategy we would have finished seventh or eighth, but we took a gamble and it didn’t pay off. You just can’t defend well on old tyres, but it was a better day for us. The result doesn’t match the car, but you take risks in this game; sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.”

Race 4 Start: 10th
Race 4 Finish: 9th
Race 5 Start: 12th
Race 5 Finish: 7th
“Today was reasonable for us, not great but not bad. We were able to pick up a spot in Race 4 in the wet, but I’m not sure we had much more in it then. We didn’t have a great start to the second race, just got caught in the shuffle at the start and couldn’t get around some guys. When the rain came we thought it’d be quick so we stayed out, and it was right on the fence but we stuck it out because we knew if we pitted we’d drop way down the order. Fortunately it slowed up and we were able to stay out and bring home a good finish. We’re still working on the balance of the car to get it better for tomorrow. We start well down the order so we’ll need every bit of speed we can find.” 

Race 6 Start: 14th
Race 6 Finish: 17th
“We just didn’t have the car speed today, we were just slow really. We made the right call with the pit stop at the end, but unfortunately the safety car went a lap longer than we thought it would and that cost us at least two more laps of racing. I think we would’ve gotten back further up than we were if we had more laps. It was a three point risk, but we just had no speed. The car wasn’t there today, not a good way to end. I think the car will suit Tassie better than it did this weekend, so we’ll try and turn it around.”