An up and down weekend for Tim Slade ended with a solid sixth place finish at Sandown despite what he dubbed a “super ring-in” engineering line up.
The CoolDrive Auto Parts Ford Mustang driver gained five positions at the Penrite Oil Sandown SuperSprint on Sunday afternoon to finish sixth in a race that was won by Shane van Gisbergen.
With regular engineer Mirko de Rosa out of action, team manager Brendan Hogan unavailable, and former substitute-engineer Mat Nilson on other duties, Walley Storey stepped in for the weekend.
The squad had a mixed weekend with finishes of 18th in Race 24, and 11th in Race 25.
However, a well-executed undercut strategy in Race 26 netted a sixth place finish, its best result since Slade finished fourth in Race 9 of the season at the Australian Grand Prix in April.
“Really our form of late has been not good enough, but we’ve had a lot going on in the team,” he said.
“My regular engineer Mirko [de Rosa], he just had a back operation a few days ago, so he’s been out the last few rounds and Brendan [Hogan] our team manager, couldn’t make it this weekend either.
“So we got some, some super ring-ins, the famous Wally Storey and Chris Fitzgerald, who looked after the car this weekend.
“We just kind of tinkered away with it and didn’t get too smart.”
Slade felt like the team performed to its potential.
“I really feel as though we maximised both races today,” he added.
“Big credit to the whole team, the pit stops were pretty smart as well.
“So yeah, it’s nice to have a result like that after our recent run.”
While he was in the top 10 of the championship standings heading into the weekend, Slade now sits three points behind Andre Heimgartner in 11th, with 1343 points.
The Supercars Championship heads next to Pukekohe Park Raceway for three races across September 9-11.
Discussion about this post