Tyres were a talking point today at the Reid Park Street Circuit after both practice sessions ran to an unusual cadence.
Championship leader Will Brown drew attention to the subject after he was only 12th-fastest in the day’s latter session, although fifth on combined times.
“I thought the first practice session went really well for us,” said the Triple Eight Race Engineering driver.
“I felt like we made gains but I think the different batch of tyres are a fair bit different and we just struggled on our allocations, which showed in Practice 2.
“We have quite a bit of pace to find and have quite a bit to do overnight before a really important qualifying session tomorrow.”
Speedcafe understands that the soft tyres which have been allocated for this weekend’s NTI Townsville 500 are from the same batch as those which were used at Albert Park in March.
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If they are not behaving like Dunlop’s typical softs, then it presents the possibility that those running today on pre-marked tyres ended up in artificially high positions on the timesheet.
That will become something of a moot point given the mandated ‘handback’ for each car is both pre-marked sets and one set of event-marked (ie new for the weekend) tyres, and hence a level playing field for the weekend’s competitive sessions (qualifying, shootouts, races).
However, those who leaned on pre-marked rubber in practice might not have experienced a true read on the track before qualifying starts tomorrow morning.
What was definitely unusual was the lack of a distinct ‘happy hour’ in the final minutes of each session, a situation which can only partially be explained by the threat of rain in Practice 2.
Uncertainty remains as to tyre degradation and hence how the weekend’s two, 88-lap races will play out, with an extra variable being the fact that this weekend is the first in Townsville with the lower minimum tyre pressure of 15psi.
Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters was fastest in both practice sessions and confirmed he also worked on race set-up, but was cagey about what might be in store.
“We tried, but you’re driving around by yourself and definitely learned some things, so I’ll let you know tomorrow afternoon if it’s a good race car or not,” said the #6 Ford Mustang pilot.
Erebus Motorsport’s Jack Le Brocq, who finished just 0.0590s slower than Waters in Practice 2, highlighted tyre degradation as an “interesting” topic.
“It’s an interesting place, this joint; older surface and the way the tyres react to it,” he said.
“It’s weird, coming from Darwin and the heat to this, and the car moves around a fair bit more, and I reckon the old tyre deg’s going to be an interesting one tomorrow.
“Fingers crossed we’ve got a good race car and, like Cam said, I think we’re not going to know until we get to the race, to see what we’re going to get.”
Qualifying for Race 13 of the Repco Supercars Championship starts tomorrow morning at 10:15 local time/AEST.
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