Andre Heimgartner says he can ‘play from here’ after qualifying the R&J Batteries Camaro on the front row for both of today’s Supercar races.
While Broc Feeney and Jack Le Brocq will start Races 14 and 15 on pole, respectively, it was Heimgartner who delivered supreme consistency to line up second in both, a rare achievement in the volatile 2023 Gen3 Supercar field.
It came after the Brad Jones Racing driver qualified 15th yesterday before a race result of 16th.
“Yesterday [we] had 85 percent throttle in qualifying for some random reason, which was frustrating, and today to actually be able to deliver on that promise and on that speed has just been, you know, really great,” Heimgartner said.
“We were so confused yesterday on my car. Obviously, [BJR team-mate] Bryce [Fullwood] went alright yesterday and coming into today, I absolutely had no idea what to expect,” he said.
“We totally changed the car going into qualifying and, yeah, managed to extract, you know, pretty consistent, good speed out of it. We can play from here, which is awesome.”
Heimgartner’s consistency across the two sessions has been rare in the Gen3 era, with Race 14 pole-sitter Feeney fourth in Race 15 quali, while Jack Le Brocq qualified 15th in the first session before recording Truck Assist Racing’s first pole only minutes later.
“I think it’s for us and for me it was a new car,” said Heimgartner. “I found about a tenth – I would have liked to find a little bit more to get pole, but yeah, you can tell with these new cars, from race to race, you can qualify second, then qualify 20th as we saw in those two qualifying sessions.
“It’s good for the category, good to see some different when there’s different people at the front.”
Race 14 starts at 11:50 Darwin time/12:20 AEST.
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