Anton De Pasquale reflects on the biggest event on the Supercars calendar – the Repco Bathurst 1000 – in his latest The Distiller column, exclusive to Speedcafe.com.
Bathurst is a crazy beast.
It’s one that is part of our championship but when you’re there and in it, it feels like a standalone.
The weather wasn’t pretty for most of the week but the fans were out there in the pissing rain for our drivers’ parade, the fans were out there waiting for signatures…
A big shout out to them because they gave us huge support in what was a pretty crappy week weather-wise. I’m sure it wasn’t too motivating for them to be out there — we loved seeing that and that’s what’s so special at Bathurst.
There is always something special about this place when it’s a dry, balls-to-the-wall kind of race which is what we had on Sunday.
The wet obviously slows it down and makes it super slippery, but it also brings a whole different element to it too — so we didn’t really mind either way.
In the dry practice sessions, we were really happy doing race runs and half keeping up with guys in a shootout sim and stuff.
The race car felt good, it felt the best it has ever been so we’re pretty happy with that.
After the incident on Lap 1 we had some wounds; bent steering and stuff. How much did that impact the car? I don’t really know because we didn’t do a lap with no damage.
We didn’t have the outright speed of probably the first two or three cars, but after all the carnage we still managed to get ourselves into the front race again after a few stops and strategy.
Then to have a bad pit stop and put us right back to where we were was a bit disappointing.
The steering wasn’t straight — when you’re replacing parts and you’re not putting it on the set-up patch and all those things always it’s never going to be perfect.
It didn’t feel super pretty, but it wasn’t that bad.
The big shout out goes to the crew because they managed to fix it in the garage and we were back out on the same lap, which then allowed us find a way back into it — I think we were third at one point on road looking pretty comfortable.
So a big effort by the team from both sides of the garage who chipped in and made that happen.
Next, we’ve got the return of street racing on the Gold Coast.
I’ve got my Queensland licence now so you could say I’m a Gold Coaster, but obviously Melburnian at heart.
It’s the home race for the team, so that will be really cool getting to stay at home.
We’ve got a couple of weeks to pull the cars down, start again, and get it prepped. Then they cop a beating on the Gold Coast.
Hopefully it’s a really good weekend.
Anton
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