Thursday: Race 3

Chaz: 5th
Nick: 14th

Thursday started off with two practice sessions where the cars were certainly lively, struggling with some understeer. The team made a few changes to the cars before back-to-back qualifying sessions which saw improvements to speed, with Chaz and Nick starting Race 3 from 4th and 10th and Race 4 from 10th and 17th on the grid.

Race 3 was going to be a challenging one, with it being the first time racing a Gen3 car on a high speed circuit, this year on the Super Soft tyre and on top of that there was some rain which resulted in the race being declared wet.

It was a clean opening half of the race, with Chaz and Nick starting on the Dunlop Super Soft tyre. Chaz had some good battles for 4thposition whilst Nick was fighting for the Top 10.

The Super Soft tyres lasted longer than expected meaning both cars ran long so they could minimise the time spent on the Hard tyre, Nick pitting with three laps to go and Chaz with two. A loophole in the rules with the race being declared wet, therefore cars could use one of the two mandated compounds and change two tyres instead of four, dropped us back a few spots, but ultimately, both cars didn’t quite have the race pace we needed to push forward any further, resulting in Chaz finishing 5th and Nick 14th.

Friday: Race 4

Chaz: 4th
Nick: DNF

Race 4 was a shorter race due a red flag in the previous session. Chaz and Nick both had great starts, Chaz up five positions into 5th and Nick up seven into 10th after the first lap.

Lap 2 was when it all changed for Nick when an electrical issue of a controlled electrical component failing set fire to the Mobil 1 NTI Racing No. 2. The car sustained a heap of damage and took Nick out of the race. Nick is safe, he was really smart to get the car as close to the fire marshals as possible to prevent further damage to the car.

The Mobil 1 Optus Racing No. 25 was fighting for the lead when the first safety car came out, Chaz stopped with effectively four laps to go, before a second safety car was called. This meant that cars that had not pitted yet, were able to pit under safety car and pop out in front of the train to the finish.

Chaz ended up finishing 4th for his 300th race start.

It’ll be a long night with the team working around the clock to get Nick’s car fixed before the two qualifying sessions and race tomorrow.