Slade praises crew with Pirtek Pit Stop Challenge finalists to be decided

Tim Slade has praised his pit crew as they sit on the cusp of sealing entry to the final of the Pirtek Pit Stop Challenge at Sydney Motorsport Park.

The #14 Brad Jones Racing entry leads the field by five points with one race remaining in the challenge, while the sister #8 entry of Nick Percat is in fourth place and on the edge of qualification for the final.

The Pirtek Pit Stop Challenge has been run during the Saturday races at Super Sprint events this season, with the top four crews (determined by car) going through to the final during the live Friday night television program at the Bathurst 1000.

A prize of $25,000 will be awarded to the winning crew.

Points are awarded to each car, with 26 for the fastest pit stop in the race, 25 for second fastest, and so on down to one point for the slowest car.

Times are measured from pit entry to pit exit, and in the event of multiple pit stops per car it is the fastest stop which is counted.

As such, Tim Slade need only have the second-slowest transit time during his compulsory pit stop in Saturday’s 120km encounter in Sydney in order to guarantee his entry’s advance to the final.

“The guys have done an amazing job and Wally’s (engineer Wally Storey) been working hard with all the guys and training them up and coaching them along,” Slade told Speedcafe.com.

“I think it’s a pretty cool thing to do because sometimes the whole team’s outlook on everything is dictated by the results that the car gets on-track, so sometimes things may not be going so well so then everyone feels that pain.

“At least the guys get their time to shine (in the Pit Stop Challenge) because they obviously do a massive amount of work back in the workshop and at the track and preparation side of things with the car, plus they’ve got to do all of the pit stop training as well.”

Mathematically, the top 16, rounded out by Jason Bright’s #56 entry, are in contention for the final.

However, only Slade’s #14 and Fabian Coulthard’s #12 DJR Team Penske entry, the former of which has topped the Challenge at three of the four races so far, are comfortably in the top four.

Michael Caruso’s #23 Nissan Motorsport entry sits third, five points above fifth place, while just three points split fourth-placed Percat from the eighth-placed #15 Nissan Motorsport entry of Rick Kelly.

Meanwhile, Slade expressed his confidence in his Freightliner Commodore’s race pace but identified a need to work on qualifying pace after finishing seventh in Friday practice at the Red Rooster Sydney Super Sprint.

The 32-year-old had moved to the top of the timesheets after sitting second behind team-mate Percat for much of the session, before being shuffled back during the final new tyre runs.

“It was a good day,” Slade confirmed.

“I genuinely feel as though we made a little step forward at Queensland Raceway in one particular area on the car which I thought should not only help us here but hopefully just moving forwards full-stop.

“We were super-fast on a used tyre at the end there and we just didn’t get the gain out of the green tyre at the end that we needed, so we need to look at that and why that is and hopefully rectify that for qualifying.

“I sort of had a feeling that that was going to be the case this weekend; I felt as though the big objective for us would be getting the car right on a new tyre for qualifying and extracting the most amount of grip from a new tyre.

“Last year, and previously here with the BJR cars, they’ve been quite strong race cars.

“More often than not, they’re pretty good with tyre life, and here’s obviously pretty hard on the tyres.

“We’ll just keep on working pretty hard on the new tyre stuff because there’s a big gap to the front few really, especially Scotty (McLaughlin, who was fastest).”

Pirtek Pit Stop Challenge: Standings