Le Brocq bounces back in Townsville

The team had a chance to enjoy the Queensland sun and relax with the second week of racing happening again at the Townsville street circuit. The 2.8Km circuit is made up of a fast straight and 13 turns which puts the drivers and cars through their paces with very little room for error. So, keeping the Tickford cars straight was important as its only two weeks to the Adelaide doubleheader, and there is no chance to head back to the Tickford Melbourne home base for any significant repairs.

The Saturday kicked off well for Le Brocq in the No.55 Mustang supported by Bendix with a strong showing in the two-morning practice sessions, posting a best time of 1m12.73s. Jack carried his form into qualifying despite being on used tyres he managed to muscle the Mustang into 9th spot on the grid in the Top Ten Shootout.

Jack made a good start for Race 22 of the Championship and held the position before making his compulsory pit stop earlier than his on-track rivals. After that, he managed his tyre life over the races 25 remaining laps to secure an 8th place finish for Saturday afternoon. Jack reflected on the race, “I think we had a good strategy, Brad (Wischusen, engineer) got us out in clear air, and I think we had a pretty good car under us. I was sort of nursing some damage as well from the first lap, so it wasn’t ideal, but we got through it. The car was good; we made the tyres last longer than we did last weekend, so that’s an improvement. I’m happy with that and reasonably happy with eighth today.”

With momentum happening at Tickford and with Jack the team pushed into Sundays qualifying and managed to improve on their grid position with Le Brocq setting times that would see him 6th and 8th on the grid for the day’s races. Race 23 saw Jack maintain his pace and he stayed out of trouble scoring a 7th place finish for the race. The last outing of the weekend was Race 24, again Jack got a good start and held the position but was caught out by a Safety car intervention and he fell down the order to a 14th place finish.

We get a wrap-up from Jack “Seventh in the first race today was pretty good, and even though the second race didn’t go to plan, I’m pretty happy with the weekend overall. I’m learning more and more every time we go out there, learning more from my teammates, and even though the results aren’t always what we want, I feel like we’re getting there. We improved our qualifying performance this weekend which certainly helped, qualifying in the top 10 all three races this weekend is a good step forward. We’ll try and keep that up and keep chipping away at it in the race.”

Tim Edwards team principal provided his team thoughts “Obviously, that’s not the way we want to end the weekend. Cam getting spun was one thing and while the Safety Car helped JC it hurt Lee and Jack, so it’s a bit of a frustrating way to finish. But all in all it was a pretty strong weekend, we had good car pace, good pit stops, and came back with four straight cars, which after two weekends and six races on a street circuit is saying something. It’s been a big four weeks so the team’s certainly earned a weekend off, we’ll head back to the Gold Coast now and look forward to Tailem Bend. Even better though will be seeing some familiar faces tomorrow; we flew some of the crew’s wives and kids out of Melbourne a couple weeks ago. They get into Queensland tonight and we’ll get to see them when we get down there tomorrow, so while it was a tough afternoon, we’ll have plenty to smile about tomorrow.”

Jack leaves Townsville in 14th position in the championship after four consecutive weekends of racing complete. The teams will now head to The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia. The first of two rounds that takes place at the circuit starting September 19-20.