Mark Dutton has outlined the keys to Red Bull Ampol Racing’s bid to overhaul Erebus Motorsport in the Adelaide Supercars title-decider.
Triple Eight Race Engineering is still in the hunt in the drivers’ championship, courtesy of Shane van Gisbergen, and also the teams’ championship, although it faces an uphill battle in both.
Van Gisbergen had snipped Brodie Kostecki’s championship lead to 104 points with his runner-up finish in the opening race of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 but their results would mirror each other by the end of the weekend; a second and a fifth each.
It means Kostecki will arrive in Adelaide with a 131-point lead atop the drivers’ standings, while Erebus holds sway by 170 over Triple Eight in the teams’ title race.
The Banyo-based squad might be an outside chance now, but there is still everything to play for when the season comes to a climax at the Vailo Adelaide 500.
“100 percent, yeah,” agreed Dutton to Speedcafe, “so it’s about us making as few mistakes as possible.
“You saw that this weekend; it wasn’t a perfect weekend but there were very few mistakes, so that was good; really proud of the team.
“We need to carry that on, have a bit more car speed at Adelaide, and really take it to Brodie.”
One of those mistakes to which Dutton referred was a kerb strike for van Gisbergen in the Sunday Top 10 Shootout.
As was the case for Kostecki on the Saturday, that consigned him to Row 5 of the grid, from which he drove to fifth by the time the chequered flag flew after 85 laps of racing.
It was not quite the swashbuckling performance which the three-time champion has been known to produce, although a need to manage a track limits warning during the contest was one of the factors which made matters more difficult.
“I think all the other teams did a spectacular job – they were quick – [and] we were having to be conservative on the on the kerbs,” explained Dutton.
“Because, the punishment for us is greater than others in the sense that, if you’re not in the title hunt, look, if you throw away a fourth or a fifth, it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as when you’re in the title hunt and you’re chasing and throw away a bunch of spots.
“So, we inevitably had to be a little bit more conservative there and that that meant we had to drop a little bit of pace, and ultimately meant we couldn’t come back through as many cars.”
Erebus’s Will Brown and Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney are currently third and fourth in the drivers’ championship, respectively.
The Adelaide 500 takes place on November 23-26.
Additional reporting: Mark Fogarty
