Will Brown and Kurt Kostecki have declared their evaluation day with Triple Eight as a great success.
Brown, Kostecki, and Nathan Morcom shared the VF Commodore which is normally campaigned in the Dunlop Super2 Series by Paul Dumbrell at Queensland Raceway.
The car, run by Eggleston Motorsport in the second tier Supercars series, actually serves as Triple Eight’s spare, and was upgraded to full Supercars Championship series specification for the day.
“It had all the latest components on it, and also the twin shocks and (new construction) tyres, so it was completely different to what we normally drive,” Brown, who is one of Dumbrell’s Super2 team-mates,” told Speedcafe.com.
“It felt a lot nicer on those tyres and really smooth to drive.
“We’ve got a lot of feedback through our data and we were able to overlay our laps with Jamie Whincup and see where we were losing and where we were gaining.
“They’re (Triple Eight team) going to get on to us in the next week or so, so we’ll go through it again and it’ll be a big help for us learning.”
Kostecki, who made two Supercars event starts last year in a Team 18 entry while filling in for the injured Lee Holdsworth in his own Commodore, said that the experience was completely different to that 2016 cameo.
“It was good to get behind the wheel of something at the highest level and with the latest spec and then have J-Dub (Jamie Whincup, who completed a handful of installation laps) come and do a few laps as well, it was good to have a baseline to compare ourselves in the same gear,” he explained to Speedcafe.com.
“I think we went really well. I didn’t have very many expectations going into the day.
“I just wanted to learn as much as I could with it being such a big opportunity.
I know there’s a lot of eyes on me and I didn’t want to make any mistakes.
“Today was pretty faultless, to be honest. We did a bit of short run stuff, a bit of long run stuff, and I think the pace overall was pretty good, consistency was good, but I was just taking in as much as I can from the engineers.”
Kostecki, whose day job is as a mechanic at Triple Eight, also cut laps in the team’s Sandman, powered by the V6 turbo engine which is set to make its Supercars debut next year.
The 19-year-old said that driving the unique car which he has worked on was a rewarding experience.
“A lot of people there have put more work (into the build of the car) than I have, but it’s cool to get behind the wheel of a car that I had something to do with,” he said.
“I had a big part in putting the engine and all that in the car and making it work, so after so many hours of doing that it was cool to be behind it, and the car was very impressive.
“The power’s really good, but there’s still quite a bit of tuning and things they need to do to get it right.”
For Morcom in particular, the extra seat time was a valuable opportunity as he acclimatises to a Supercar after taking out last year’s Australian Endurance Championship in a McLaren 650S.
“The transition is definitely taking a bit longer than I thought it would have,” he admitted.
“The tyre’s quite a difficult tyre and it’s such a heavy car.
“In the GT car, you could smash down on the brakes late as you could go, pull it up on the aero, and get back on it again with the aids of the car.
“With the Supercar, we don’t have that and it’s pretty much all in the brakes and using that power down.
“I’ve had to change my driving style a bit, but I’m getting my feet around it now and I can definitely see why people say in Super2 they do a couple of seasons before they get there and it’s all down to mileage.
The next round of the Dunlop Super2 Series supports the Red Rooster Sydney Super Sprint on August 18-20.
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