Dominic Storey is happy to have come away from his maiden Dunlop Super2 series event with an eighth place finish and sitting ninth in the points standings.
Storey made the switch into the category this year, having previously raced in the Australian Endurance Championship, as he looks to progress his racing career.
The New Zealander’s weekend didn’t start well, outside the Top 15 in both Friday’s practice sessions in Adelaide, and qualifying just 20th in the 23-car field.
Storey then gradually raced the Eggleston Motorsport Commodore forward across the weekend’s three races.
“I was a bit disappointed at the start of the weekend,” Storey admitted to Speedcafe.com.
“I was sick on Thursday evening and Friday, I got some food poisoning or something that seemed to go around the track, a few people got sick, it put me off on Friday. I had a shocking run, well below where I expected to be.
“Once I got myself in a better state on Saturday I realised it was probably down to feeling so unwell on Friday and not being quite there mentally.
“Then I was just happy to have a clean weekend.
“I achieved my goal of top 10, which was my initial goal from the outset, and was pretty happy with eighth on Sunday, and to leave ninth in the points wasn’t terrible, and top rookie.”
While happy with the final outcome Storey isn’t allowing himself to get carried away, and acknowledges there’s plenty more he needs to learn before he’s in with a chance of a race win.
“In Supercars, as everyone’s aware, you’re quite limited on the amount of tyres you have,” he explained.
“I haven’t really had a lot of time to get myself prepared with that side of things, and I think that’s where my performance will come from.
“From a driving perspective I think it’s there, it’s just about understanding how to get the best out of the tyre in quali.
“Once I can get there I think come the long runs the pace will be okay, it’s just about finding that little bit more raw speed in quali I guess to extract a better time out of the car and get ourselves a little bit further up the grid.
“Sort of where Will Brown was in Adelaide, that’s my short to medium term goal, is to try and get up a bit closer to him.”
Brown, who is also part of the four-car Eggleston Motorsport stable, qualified fourth, and raced on the fringes on the Top 5 before climbing to third in the weekend’s final race.
Storey though is happy with his debut, and pleased to have left Adelaide both with a solid haul of points and a straight car.
“I was a bit cautious in Adelaide. First weekend, don’t want to crash the car, don’t want to do anything silly. If I look at other guys in the field that crashed at Turn 8 they virtually got no points for the weekend and we’re sitting ninth in the championship.
“I feel a lot more confident but I’ve still a lot of work to do.”
The second round of the Super2 Series is at Symmons Plains as part of the Tyrepower Tasmania SuperSprint on April 6-8.
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