Dick Johnson Racing’s Anton De Pasquale believes he needs a “miracle” to catch Brodie Kostecki in the Repco Bathurst 1000 despite provisionally qualifying in third position.
However, he was 0.3023s off the pace set by Kostecki in that Friday afternoon session, and about half as far behind the PremiAir Racing Camaro of James Golding, and gave a pessimistic assessment of at least his prospects of a victory.
Asked by Speedcafe if the Erebus Motorsport driver can be caught, De Pasquale replied, “Maybe; I don’t know.
“Unless something miracle happens to our thing overnight, not by us, but anything can happen come Sunday.
“It’s a long race, obviously the cars have got to survive first and do all that and get through it [with] no damage and everything, but it is all goes clean… Yeah, we’ll be trying our best.”
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Ford teams had been ringing the alarm bells on parity in the lead-up to the Bathurst 1000 weekend, to the point that meetings were held late into Wednesday night in an unsuccessful bid to have aerodynamic changes approved despite a parity review not having been triggered.
READ MORE: The parity trigger explained
However, the formline has not been so lopsided in terms of the brand divide in the five sessions held so far.
Erebus’s #99 Camaro has topped four of them, but even the next-best Camaro has been as much as 0.6311s off the pace in the all-in sessions, and Ford outfit Grove Racing achieved a one-two in Practice 3.
In fact, six of the 13 Mustangs in the field have made the Top 10 Shootout, compared to four of the 15 Camaros, one of which was crashed by Will Brown during Qualifying.
Nevertheless, De Pasquale rejected suggestions that the Blue Oval machine is proving competitive this weekend.
“I wouldn’t say [the Mustangs are] that competitive,” he stated.
“I guess there’s been a pretty consistent big gap to the fastest of the other brand, so whatever fills that in between doesn’t really matter.
“The gap’s been pretty big and pretty consistent.
“Obviously, they’re doing an amazing job, but I think we maximised our package today as well.
“But that’s how it is. Obviously, we’ve read all the other things. I haven’t been a part of any other stuff; we’ve just been getting on with it. The team has been doing all that side of things behind closed doors.
“Everyone knows what the situation is, but we can’t change it, so we just get on with it.
“We’ll run our race and hopefully we end up with a trophy.”
He had much the same to say when queried on where he thinks Car #11 stacks up on race pace.
“Probably about where we are,” remarked De Pasquale, who is pairing again with Tony D’Alberto for the enduros.
“I think we did a pretty good job of maximising our package today and so far.
“We’ve been pretty consistently about half a second off Brodie, so that’s probably about where it’s at, I think, and that’s been pretty much every session.
“We’ll keep working at it but our car feels pretty good, we’re doing a good job, Ludo’s [Lacroix, #11 Race Engineer] been working hard, and this is where we are.”
As for DJR’s other Mustangs, Car #17 also made the shootout in 10th thanks to Will Davison while debutant Kai Allen was handed the reins for the #98 wildcard which he is sharing with Simona De Silvestro and put it 25th on the grid.
Tomorrow’s Supercars Championship action starts with Practice 5 at 10:00, followed by Practice 6 at 13:00 and the Top 10 Shootout at 17:05 (all times local/AEDT).
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