Jack Le Brocq takes maiden win in the No.55 Tickford Mustang

The Supercars championship made an unexpected return to Sydney for the next round of the championship with the Winston SuperSprint cancelled due to issues around border controls and COVID 19. In a more dramatic twist, Victorian teams including Tickford Racing were forced to quickly relocate to Sydney when overnight border restrictions were put into place forcing a rushed exit from their home base for a life on the road. This has also forced the Supercar’s Championship to amend the racing calendar and move races to Northern and Western states where restrictions have eased. There were two other interesting developments for this round, a return to night racing with Sydney Motorsport Park debuting their new lighting system for the Saturday night Sprint Race and the team’s new approach to working with the hard and soft Dunlop control tyres allotment.

Jack started the weekend somewhat off the pace for the opening qualifying with a 1m30.21s, starting 18th in Race 10 and finishing 16th, Jack explained the teams strategy “At the start of the week-end we were always going to write Saturday off with the hard tyres, We pitted early just to get the tyres off the car that we were going to have to recycle, then sort of cruised to the end at the back of the train in the hard tyre race. But we saved some tyres today so tomorrow should be much better, we have two green sets of soft tyres and some fast cars in the team, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Race 11 Jack managed to qualify 12th and finished 16th after contact with a slowmoving Mark Winterbottom at the start of the race dropping the No.55 Mustang three places. The team decided to bolt on another set of hards which would be crucial for the final race “The plan wasn’t actually to put all the eggs in one basket for one race today, but we had a bit of a bump and a bit of mischief at the start of the Race this morning, so we decided to put another set of hards on it and press on from there, and it ended up working out alright.” Jack explained.

The new tyre format and the Tickford tyre choice left Jack with much-talked about ‘all eggs in one basket’ approach to Race 12 tyre strategy with two sets of brand new softs available for the race. Jack qualified the No.55 Mustang supported by Bendix in 7th position for the final race of the week-end and with a solid tyre strategy he marched through the field leading home pole sitter Andre Heimgartner to take his maiden victory in the Supercars championship. Jack was excited, to say the least, post-race he shared his thoughts; “I’m at a loss for words. Man, those last few laps were tough, I was just hanging on, trying to stay smooth, not slide the car too much, and just look after the tyres. I had a moment with, like, three laps to go and thought I was in trouble, but gathered it up and brought it home. Massive thanks to everyone at Tickford and Supercheap Auto Racing who made this happen. We swallowed a couple tough results in the first two races to have a proper go at the last race, and it paid off. Absolutely stoked.” Team Principal Tim Edwards provided his thoughts to the weekend, “We’re so happy for Jack, he’s had to learn a lot in a short time here and was certainly up against it to make those tyres last to the end. He did a great job and thoroughly deserves it. James had a great first race today as well and was so close to getting a snowboard himself. The tyre strategies this weekend made for some really wild results, which is what we expected, and hopefully it was as entertaining for the fans as it was nail-biting for us!”

Leaving Sydney Jack sits 13th in the Championship standings and prepares to make the journey to Hidden Valley Raceway in Darwin for the next round of the Virgin Australian Championship on the 8th of August.