The Supercars will return to the track tomorrow at the Symmons Plains Raceway for the second official round of the 2017 Supercars Championship season. While they competed at the recent Australian F1 GP, it was a non-championship round, so all teams are looking forward to getting stuck back into the fray of fighting for Championship points.
The Mobil 1HSV Team is no exception and after reasonable finishes at the AGP, James Courtney in P5 and Scotty Pye in 7th, the team will be taking all the data from Melbourne to Tasmania in the hope of an even stronger performance.
The drivers answered a lot of questions over the course of the weekend, and got a better understanding of the car and how it react and due to the fact that Symmons Plains is a unique track with lap times critical over the extremely short 2.41kms track, qualifying is going to be massively important.
There isn’t going to be much separating the field, and there also isn’t going to be much clean air on a flyer, so timing it right could be the difference between a top 5 start and a bottom 5 start.
“We are really looking forward to Tassie; looking forward to racing for points again and to practice some of the lessons we learnt at the AGP,” said team boss Adrian Burgess. “Although Tassie is a short lap with short corners it’s not an easy place to go to. You don’t have to be very far off the pace to be well down the grid."
"It’s really important that you’ve got a car that can turn, for the hairpin especially, but it’s also important that it brakes well and put its power down well. Although it’s a small track, you need all the normal attributes in the car to put a good lap together, and a good weekend together."
"The car has improved from last year, but this is a massive test for us to see how much we have improved over the break, so we are looking forward to going racing.”
The race format this year is two qualifying sessions and two races. Saturday’s race is 50 laps, while Sunday’s is 84.
