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Challenging weekend at Winton
10th and 20th for Frosty
TICKFORD RACING – WINTON SUPERSPRINT PREVIEW
16 May, 2018
Tickford Racing enters the sixth round of 2018 looking to continue its momentum from early May’s Perth SuperSprint, where Mark Winterbottom (No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X) scored the team’s first podium finish of 2018 when he finished second in Race 11 at Barbagallo Raceway. On the weekend where he will turn 37 years old, “Frosty” returns to the track where has earned four of his 38 Supercars race wins.
DRIVERS’ VIEW
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
“I’m looking forward to it. We’ve had a tough run early in the year, but obviously the podium at the last round was good for our confidence. I’m interested now to see where the car sits at a different track. It’s our home test track, but we haven’t driven there in 2018 so it’s kind of a strange feeling going to your home track – not underdone – but with no laps. It’s just the way the testing runs now, but I’m really excited to see if the gains we made in Perth genuinely run onto other tracks, and going into a four week break, it’s important to have a couple of good rounds together.
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Co-driver Practice (Dean Canto): 1m38.60s, 4th
Practice 1: 1m32.65s, 6th
Practice 2: 1m20.11s, 14th
“It was an interesting day, the weather played a big part in that. We didn’t hit our numbers, where we wanted to hit them, in the dry. I’m really happy with the wet pace, but the dry pace is not quick enough. We weren’t hitting our numbers that we target. I went out for some guest rides after practice and it felt a little bit more normal, so I’m happy that we get another practice tomorrow. I’m surprised we weren’t as far off, as bad as the car felt. But it’s a new day tomorrow, and I think we’ve already made some gain in the car, so bring on tomorrow.”
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Race 13 Quali: 1m19.50s, 7th
Race 13 Finish: 10th
“We were just not quick enough today. We tried our best, but we’ve been stuck on the same issues the whole weekend. The engineers are really working hard to try and fix it, but in that race we just struggled for pace. We’re pressing on, but we didn’t have the best pace and we had some tyre degradation as well. Our strategy was good, we were quite clean on track, nothing really happened, but it comes down to pace, so we’ll try to fix it up and go again. It’s a little bit deflating, going back a little bit, but we’ve got another day, three new sets of tyres, and we’ll go again.”
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Race 14 Quali: 1m19.72s, 18th
Race 14 Finish: 20th
“I had a good start and picked up four or five spots. I got up around 12th or something early, but we pitted and filled The Bottle-O car full of fuel, and it just made us way too heavy throughout that whole stint, we just burnt time in that whole stint. I lost a lot of positions, then when we came out for the last stint I went out for about three laps and I think I broke a chord in the tyre again. I dropped two seconds a lap and it changed the balance tenfold, so I reckon I’ve broken another cord, and that was three laps into a 20-lap stint, so it made my life a lot harder than it needed to be. It’s a tough way to end the weekend, but we have a few weeks to try and diagnose our issues, so we’ll dig through the data and get back out there in Darwin.”