Anton De Pasquale talks us through the final Supercars round of 2022 in Adelaide and the preparation for Gen3 in his latest The Distiller column, exclusive to Speedcafe.com.
Hey everyone,
We’ve wrapped up the 2022 Supercars season and what a place to do it. The Adelaide 500 was an awesome event to round out the year.
For our Shell V-Power Racing Team, it was a good way to end the year with a one-two in the shootout for Will and I.
Then in the final race, we got on the podium with Car #11 — ending the season with a trophy is always really cool.
We obviously wanted a bigger one, but nonetheless, we got one and finished the year with the fastest qualifying car.
So we’ve got something to talk about over the summer, which is cool.
Obviously, it doesn’t mean much going into next year, but good motivation for everyone to push on.
My car was good all weekend — I was on course for pole on Saturday as well, until the last corner where I had a big rear lock up.
Our race car on Sunday was a lot better; in the first stint we had really good pace, then some things didn’t fall our way, so we fell out of the loop a bit.
The track itself was very different with the resurfaced bits — the cars were very edgy.
I think the cars with good stability and a good feel out of it got an advantage.
We spent a lot of time tuning that in — we expected it anyway, but the new surface always throws you some curveballs. I think we handled it well though.
Big shoutout to our team for a huge year — we have a really good culture and a really good group here at the Shell V Power Racing Team.
There’s a lot of continuity, which is really good, and with the new ownership taking over and some key personnel adding value to the organisation like David Noble coming on-board is exciting.
So looking forward to the new era for the team, a big off-season, and working hard to make these Gen3 cars as good as what we’ve got now.
Will and I spend a fair bit of time at the workshop hanging with the boys — we’ve got a really cool crew, so we just like hanging out.
As we move into 2023, there will be a lot of stuff to do as we get ready for a new car — seats and all that stuff once the car is mostly built, which is going to take a bit of time.
We don’t really know how we want to sit in the car, so I think that will be the biggest process to it on the driver’s side, and just understanding the car.
Then hopefully we will roll out and be fast next season.
Wishing everyone a great Christmas and New Year!
Looking forward to 2023.
Anton.
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