Back to back in Darwin with Jack Le Brocq and Tickford Racing

Back to back in Darwin with Jack Le Brocq and Tickford Racing

With a week layover, the Supercars teams enjoyed some Darwin weather and relaxation before re-turning to do battle at Hidden Valley Raceway in the second leg of the

Darwin doubleheader. All the teams were expecting an improvement on their relative performance with the unusual chance to race at the same venue two weeks running, and Tickford was no exception after some strong results the week before at Hidden Valley.

The format remained the same, with practice and qualifying on Saturday followed by a Sprint Race in the afternoon. Jack Le Brocq in the No.55 Mustang supported by Bendix improved on his practice and qualifying time from the previous round but so had the rest of the teams, Jack managed a 1m06.68s in qualifying, and this placed him in 15th on the grid for race 16 of the Championship.

Saturday’s race didn’t go to plan for Jack, with an accident and retirement on Lap 1 that damaged the left front of his No. 55 Mustang. Le Brocq had nowhere to go as a car alongside cut across his nose, damaging the left front suspension, Jack gave us his view on the incident. “I didn’t have a bad initial start; I think we made up a spot or two. Then we had a little bit of action in front of us, so I rolled out of the throttle slightly on the exit of Turn 1, and Andre (Heimgartner) just clipped the front tyre in a really weird way. It wasn’t a big impact, I think it was just an unfortunate angle, it broke the upright, and that was our day. It’s unfortunate, I was fairly happy with the car, we ran used tyres in the Shootout and got a reasonable lap out of it, so it’s a shame we couldn’t show it in the race. We tend to do better on Sundays anyway, so we’ll try again tomorrow.”

With repairs made overnight to the Mustang Jack maintained his qualifying on the grid for Sunday, with a time of 1m06.76s, putting him in 15th on the grid for both the second and third races of the weekend.

Both races were challenging and Jack felt he had an improved race car on the Sunday, but struggled to show it across the day, finishing 14th and 13th after being stuck in traffic on track during both outings. Jack reflected on the days racing “We got through it, I think we learnt a lot across the day and the weekend. I struggled a bit in qualifying today, I don’t think I got the most out of it, and when you don’t piece it together in qualifying, you’re on the back foot the rest of the day. I had a much better car in the final race, which was good progress, but we got stuck behind other cars so we couldn’t quite show it. Tough weekend, but thanks to the boys who have worked so hard, we’ll keep improving and take the show to Townsville.”

Team Principal Tim Edwards provided his thoughts for the weekend, “The second race today was obviously pretty disappointing, but it wasn’t representative of our weekend. The weekend, in general, was a big improvement on last weekend, and while we have some ground to make up to the guys at the front, our cars were much better this weekend, which is worth noting given the short turnaround the boys have had. Hopefully, we can take another step forward next weekend in Townsville and keep chipping away.”

After an action-packed two weeks in Darwin, the teams hit the road for the long drive to Townsville for the next doubleheader at the NTI SuperSprint next weekend followed by another race on the 05th-6th of September on a very exciting but unforgiving street circuit.