Hidden Valley Driver Thoughts

18 June 2018

Frosty's debrief

The northernmost event of the 2018 Supercars season is Round 7, the Darwin Triple Crown. After a four-week break, Tickford Racing heads to the Northern Territory to contest Races 15 and 16 on Hidden Valley Raceway’s 2.9-kilometre permanent circuit just outside the state capital.

Following a test day at Winton Motor Raceway last week, the Tickford Racing quartet aims to apply the lessons learned from a full day of running to score some needed results after a mild start to 2018. Chaz Mostert (No. 55 Supercheap Auto Ford Falcon FG X) leads the team into Darwin on the back of 11 top tens from 14 races, but sits just 11th in points as the season nears its midway point.

Mark Winterbottom (No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X) looks to hone in on his four Supercars race wins at Hidden Valley, his last trip to the top step of the podium in Darwin coming in 2014. 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
“Another weekend with the team. It was nice to have a few weeks away to spend time with the family, but I’m glad to get back to the track this weekend. We’ve had some good results over the years at Darwin, last year was pretty tough but it was just one of those rounds. We had a fairly productive test day last week so hopefully we can take what we learned and turn it into a strong weekend.” 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Practice 1: 18th, 1m07.28s
Practice 2:  17th, 1m06.79s
“It was a difficult day. We’re trying to get the car to do things and it’s fighting it a bit. I think improved a little bit in the second session, but with gains you find weaknesses. We just weren’t quick enough. I made  a meal of Turn 5 on my quick lap, and probably dropped a couple of tenths there, but around tenth to 12th is probably where we sat in that session, but it doesn’t feel quick enough for where we need to be. We’ll tune her up and go again tomorrow. We’ll try and fix the weaknesses and not lose anything that the car is doing well, so we need to do a fair bit of work. Thankfully that wasn’t quali and it’s not the race, so we’ll try and fix it for tomorrow.” 

DRIVERS’ VIEW
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Practice 3: 16th, 1m06.67s
Race 15 Quali: 16th, 1m06.30s
Race 15 Finish: 20th 
“When you’re in the pack you kind of cop it a bit, and that’s what happened again. I had a good start, I just got driven off the track at Turn 1, which was frustrating. I dropped back a bit, and then caught a few hits in the back later, in the pack it always happens. We’re not quick enough right now, we’re trying to get in the right position so we can go racing, but where we are you’re always going to get knocked around a bit. We’ll see how we go tomorrow.”

DRIVERS’ VIEW
No. 5 The Bottle-O Ford Falcon FG X
Mark Winterbottom
Race 16 Quali: 24th, 1m06.21s
Race 16 Finish: 13th 
“There were some positives to the day. I got a good start, and we had a pretty clean race, really. I just couldn’t follow cars very well. I really struggled behind them, with tyre temps and stuff, but it looks like some of our other cars were better in that area, so we can go back now, analyse that data and come back stronger for Townsville. Townsville’s a better track for us in terms of the layout. Tough weekend, I don’t think I’ve ever qualified 24th before, so that was a new stat. It was nice to almost get in the top ten, race forward and race clean, so we’ll keep trying.”