Trading Post Racing’s Jason Bright says that some crafty set-up changes by the Brad Jones Racing during the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 team put the #14 Commodore back in contention.
After taking provisional pole on Friday, Bright (partnered by New Zealander Matt Halliday) could not translate that speed into a pole lap, slipping to eighth place.
In the race, the #14 car quickly fell even further behind.
It wasn’t until the end of the mountain marathon that Bright started to make serious inroads towards the podium, eventually taking fourth, but he says that without those demon tweaks, it would have been a very long afternoon …
“It was a long way off the pace early on – we weren’t in contention at all,” he told Speedcafe.com.au.
“If we didn’t make those changes, we would have been lucky to be in the top 10.
“I don’t know what was going on with the car. We weren’t quick in the shootout, it was OK in the warm-up but the first two stints, we were no where.”
Bright says that there were some circumstances that hindered the entry, potentially making it look worse than what it was.
“We missed an opportunity to pit because JR (Jason Richards) was in front of us,” he said.
“We would have had to queue, so they decided to send me around. In hindsight, we probably should have pitted, maybe even after the first lap crash and maybe put Matt in to get his tank run out of the way.
“We missed a couple of opportunities there, but we still didn’t have the pace at that stage.
“We made changes at every stop and in the end, it turned into a pretty quick car. I’d used up a fair bit of my tyres passing (Michael) Caruso, (Lee) Holdsworth, Russell (Ingall) and finally (James) Courntey.
“From what I hear, we would have been in much better shape if Will (Davison) didn’t crash and it had of gone green all the way. I understand that there were some guys out there hurting for fuel and that the Safety Car saved them. We were easily going to make it to the end …”
