While the majority of the southern-based teams are expected to test at Winton on Thursday, the Albury-based squad will instead send one of its Camaros up to Ipswich again on Tuesday, when the Sunshine State-based squads are in action.
The opportunity to do so has arisen because of rookie Jaxon Evans, who is entitled to three extra test days, with the freedom to undertake them at tracks other than Winton.
BJR had already used up one of those rookie test days at Queensland Raceway in April, after which Andre Heimgartner won the opening race at Taupo, representing a remarkable turnaround from the team’s struggles at Albert Park.
Next week’s outing, while planned prior to the Perth SuperSprint, comes at an opportune time given the team’s weekend at Wanneroo Raceway was a tough one again.
“I was pretty happy with how we stacked up when it came to crunch time in qualifying where I felt like I made a pretty reasonable step in my own personal performance, unlocking some speed, or being pretty close to the other competitors around us,” said Evans.
“Obviously, we were not at the right end of the tenth, which doesn’t help around here and our qualifying positions weren’t great. We were able to race forward a little bit and I think the tyre deg that everyone was expecting at this circuit wasn’t as big as what was hoped for us at BJR.
“At BJR, we have confidence in our cars looking after the tyres pretty well, but it wasn’t a strength we couldn’t use.
“It’s back to the drawing board and we’ll have another test day under the belt to hopefully unlock some more speed – not just for myself, but for the team.
“We’ll keep working away at it and hopefully when we hit Darwin, we’ve got some more ‘secret sauce’ and we can be fighting towards the front where I think we deserve to be.”
Ordinarily, a Supercars Championship squad would normally hold one test day in pre-season, another around late-May, and the third prior to the enduros.
Team owner Brad Jones explained to Speedcafe regarding the return to Queensland Raceway, “It’s a place that we haven’t been to before to use as a test track and so there’s an opportunity there on the 28th.
“I think it’s important for us to go back and validate some stuff. We got something out of it last time so we’re just going to revisit and stack our testing at Winton to the back half of the year to coincide with the enduros.”
Walkinshaw Andretti United clearly benefited from a pre-Wanneroo test day when Chaz Mostert scored a race win and a second place in the West.
BJR talisman Heimgartner, by way of contrast, recorded finishes of 13th and 15th but said their struggles in Perth were not entirely unexpected.
He is set to notch up 10 laps in Evans’ SCT Logistics Camaro on Tuesday per Supercars testing rules.
“[Wanneroo] was a hard race for us last year, so I think we made some improvements, but yeah, really struggled with outright pace and qualifying and stuff,” the R&J Batteries Camaro pilot told Speedcafe.
“I think we work well as a team to get out what we could – 13th and 15th – so, solid considering but it definitely leaves a little bit to be desired.
“We need to try and qualify further up and we’ve got a bit to find but, all in all, not terrible.
“I think we’re realistic with where we are. If we get it right, at certain tracks, we can be in contention, but we’re just not consistent enough at the moment.
“Going into the next few rounds is more of our sort of style of track, so we’ll see if we can capitalise and learn, but we knew this weekend was always going to be tough.”
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