The McGill Motorsport team has come away from the opening round of the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series happy following a solid points haul and two competitive race finishes.
However, whilst the pace and development of the car across the weekend was good, the end result was slightly disappointing after a possible top-10 finish was lost following a brush with the wall in Race 2.
Heading into qualifying, the team made some subtle changes to the car in order to push for a good grid position. However, changes to the track condition and the setup changes induced a lot of understeer, resulting in an unrepresentative 16th starting spot.
Having put the that minor setback behind them and found a better balance for the car, Race 1 got off to a positive start, with McGill quickly jumping up the order to be just outside the top-10 and pushing his rivals hard in the opening laps.
“We made a good start and got three places on the first lap and then another on the second. The car felt great and I quickly settled into the race and was pushing really hard to try and get up into the top-10. Passing around this circuit isn’t the easiest thing to do, but I was pushing as hard as I could to try and force a mistake, but at this level there aren’t too many errors from the guys around me.”
Having pushed hard for most of the race, even setting a faster lap time than in qualifying, McGill found that he had used up the performance from his tyres, and so had to settle for what ended up being 11th place.
With confidence high the team were looking to push deep into the top 10 in Race 2, but unfortunately it was not to be. Aaron, known for his consistently exceptional starts in the Series, made a rare mess of it and was swamped off the grid, dropping to last place. Having clawed back some of the damage on the opening lap to be 13th, he then fought door-to-door with several drivers in the first half of the race, swapping places just outside the top-10, until just after half distance, when a brush with the wall caused some bodywork damage.
The side of the team’s Falcon was damaged and the front panel began rubbing on the right front tyre following the incident, sending huge amounts of smoke trailing behind the car. Whilst no performance was lost, the race officials deemed that the car had to pull into pit lane for the damage to be inspected for safety reasons, ending what looked like a certain charge into the top-10.
“The start wasn’t great, but the car felt awesome in the first half of the race, and we were really able to mix it with the cars in front of us. It was right on the limit for all of us, lap after lap, and I made just a tiny error in running wide and touched the wall. On any other circuit, it would have been fine, but there is no comfort zone around here and it pushed the guard onto the tyre,” McGill explained.
“The car was running fine, but there was certainly plenty of smoke from the tyre! The officials saw fit to force us to stop to inspect the damage, which was a real shame, because by the time I stopped on lap 17, it had essentially resolved itself and the smoke was gone, but once they issue the call, they can’t undo it, so that was that.”
“It was pretty disappointing that such a small thing has cost us both a top-10 race result and also a top-10 place in the Series standings. I honestly think I could have got as high as 8th but, with the steady improvements in the car and our pace this weekend, I’m confident that top-10’s are going to be regular this year, hopefully better.”
