VICTORIAN Supercars squad Team 18 will set up camp in Queensland for a winter getaway between the Townsville and Sydney rounds next month.
In contrast to what is largely a spread-out calendar, the Townsville 500 and Sydney SuperNight will take place just a fortnight apart, on July 5-7 and July 19-21 respectively.
In a Q&A video, team principal Adrian Burgess revealed his team will not journey home to Mount Waverley in the intervening period.
“From here we go to Townsville and Sydney Motorsport Park without returning… we won’t be coming back to Melbourne in between.
“We’ll be staying up in Queensland and taking advantage of the winter up there, because it’s much better than it is down here in Melbourne.”
Burgess also provided further detail about the cause of the Sunday qualifying mishap in Darwin which saw them unable to repeat their Saturday heroics (headlined by Mark Winterbottom’s second podium of the season).
“We didn’t stick to our plan, we didn’t stick to our process, we got a little bit suckered in from some of the other teams,” he said.
“We had our plan on when we wanted to leave the pitlane – we wanted to leave in the train of cars, because that definitely helps you at Darwin, but we got suckered into leaving early. And then on our flying lap we had traffic in front of us and things like this.
“Did we learn from it? Of course we learnt from it, we discussed it extensively in the debriefs… we have got to make sure we make our plan, stick to our plan, execute the plan as we’ve designed it to be, and then we will be able to replicate what we did on the Saturday.”
David Reynolds holds 11th in the overall championship; Winterbottom is four places behind, but responsible for both of Team 18’s second-place finishes in 2024 (one apiece at Albert Park and Darwin).
