Shop
The Matt Stone Racing driver enjoyed a solid hit-out in Far North Queensland with a pair of top 10 finishes from the two races (10th on Saturday and ninth on Sunday).
However he had to do it the hard way on both days after managing just 19th on the grid for each of the races.
His impressive recoveries were aided by excellent tyre life but the lack of single-lap speed was cause for concern for Hill.
He does have a theory that that too was related to tyres, given Triple Eight had concerns over the batch of soft tyres used for the Townsville weekend.
“The race car was really fast [in Townsville] and I felt like I had two of my strongest race performances,” he said.
“I was able to look after my tyres enabling me to move forward late in the races. It was really satisfying to have a pair of good performances.
“We have to fix some things in qualifying, we were struggling a bit in that area. If we can get on top of that, I’m really keen to see what we’re able to achieve.
“I think we were caught out by the tyre batch issues that also hampered Triple Eight as well. Matt Stone Racing and Triple Eight are very closely aligned including sharing the same set-up philosophy.
“I did run on a set of tyres from Perth in practice and I thought my car was good, but when we got on the Townsville batch we were lacking overall grip.
“That was a real head scratcher because if it was one end of the car, it can be fixed reasonably quickly, but when you feel like you’re lacking front and rear, it’s a real problem.
“We were a little bit stumped with the qualifying car, but it didn’t seem to worry us during the races as the car looked after its tyres well to help us get two strong race results.”
Curiously, the Townsville event allocation tyres came from the same batch as was used at Albert Park earlier this year, where no such concerns over the performance of the tyre were raised.
Back to Sydney, Hill added that he is looking forward to what is a quasi home round for him as a Canberran, as well as the excitement of racing under lights.
“It’s as close to a home event as I can have being a few hours away from Canberra and it’s a track I know really well having spent a lot of time there in the past,” he said.
“I like the track, I always have and it’s going to be a big weekend.
“Off the track, we’ve got a lot of our sponsor group coming, which will be really cool to have them altogether to cheer us on. It’ll be a busy week, but I’m lucky to have a good team around me and hopefully I can only worry about driving.
“I love night racing. As a spectacle it looks fantastic, while racing at night helps the racing product as one thing we’re always battling are the tyres getting too hot, but under lights they hang on a lot better.
“I’m back in the Supaglass livery for Sydney. I think it’s a really good looking one and we had some really good performances in it, so hopefully it bodes well for Sydney Motorsport Park.”
