Heimgartner’s eighth place finish was rewarded with hearty applause from Sean Hanley, the former front-man of Toyota’s Supercars entry, and his recent replacement John Pappas.
There was a congratulatory handshake from Toyota ambassador Neil Crompton too, and an approving smile from the company’s under-the-radar motorsport manager Ben Casagrande.
It was recognition for a successful step in a program that was decades in the making and faced plenty of big challenges on its way to the grid.
“I can’t really ask for much more,” Heimgartner told Speedcafe.
“The race was always going to be a bit of a lottery with a new car, new aero, new engine. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but really happy to execute a pretty solid race and have some decent speed.”
Heimgartner was the class of the five-strong Supra fleet throughout Friday, qualifying 10th and holding his own in the race, despite feeling far from familiar with the package.
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“Every aero package has its own features, and especially the engines being early in the program… it’s not the final product,” Heimgartner said.
“When you’re racing and you’re trying to look after the tyres and do all that stuff, all those little things really add up and it caught me off-guard a couple of times. It was very different.
“It just takes a while to learn the mapping and the way the power is delivered. The Chev is very smooth, very linear. This is more like how the Ford works, a bit trickier, but I think we got it in a good spot.”
While the 5.2-litre 2UR-GSE V8 engine feels different for the driver, Heimgartner said straight-line speed did not stick out as a significant issue.
“When I had cars behind me, it didn’t make me vulnerable or anything,” he said.
“In a straight line when you’re behind someone, potentially something [to be worked on], but you’re picking hairs really.
“It’s not so much about the [speed] number, it’s more about how it delivers it, which is the area we can work on, but definitely not screaming any problems yet.”
So how did the other Supras fare?
Toyota’s flagship homologation team, Walkinshaw TWG Racing, had a tough night at the office.
Ryan Wood and Chaz Mostert qualified 15th and 20th before essentially swapping places in the race – Mostert rising to 15th while Wood slumped to 21st.
Both took just two tyres in their pit stop and proved unable to fight with the four-tyre stoppers in the closing stages.
“We were the only cars in the field to take two tyres, and we thought a lot more would have done that,” said Mostert.
“Tonight isn’t a real judgement of where we are, we do know we have a lot of work to do overnight but we are excited for the future and developing something new.”
The remainder of the BJR fleet were also down the order – Cam Hill qualifying 19th and finishing 16th, while Macauley Jones started and finished 22nd.
“We were chasing the balance all day and didn’t really find the sweet spot. So that’s going to be something we look at overnight,” said Jones.
“But congratulations to the team, we put three awesome looking race cars on the grid and it was a proud moment for us.”
The Supercars field will return to the track for qualifying at 3:40pm AEDT before a Top 10 Shootout at 4:35pm and Race 2 from 7:35pm.
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