Sydney Motorsport Park Driver View

Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Practice 1: 11th – 1m30.98s
Practice 2: 2nd – 1m29.00s
“It was nice to have a good car under me and have a bit of a crack. All our cars worked the same which was nice. We ended up p2 and I think there is more in it but we will have to see what the wind does tomorrow and chase the track conditions. It is nice to have a good day and I look forward to progressing from where we are.”

Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Qualifying: 2nd – 1m28.53s
Race 17: 4th
“I made a good start and was pretty confident I could lead into turn one. We got away as I wanted but from lap one the right-front tyre felt like it was going to take a lot of punishment, the degradation here is quite aggressive. I was trying to really conserve it while maintain position but it started to peel off and that was it. We got held in the stop for quite a long time and it put us into a bit of a mess. On the restart there was contact and I got spat wide. There were a few negatives but we need to make the right-front more kind to us. We’ve made gains – it is a good for one lap and there is work to do on the race car. You don’t fix everything on one day but so far we are going well.”

Mark Winterbottom – #5 The Bottle-O PRA Ford:
Qualifying: 7th – 1m28.87s
Race 18: 19th
“We were tracking okay running in sixth. Our pace was reasonable, not leading pace, but to everyone else we were pretty good. In the last stint I went out and we broke something. The car turned nastily and from the out lap it was bad so I don’t know what we’ve done. Something has let go so it is frustrating. It was an easy p6 today and in the end we looked amateur running around at the back. It was about survival. We will find what it was but you can’t read a broken car so it has been a frustrating day.”