TIM Blanchard believes his team has given themselves the best possible chance of succeeding in the Gen3 era of Supercars but is not expecting an easy road.
The Blanchard Racing Team has led the way in pre-season, completing a shakedown last Wednesday at Winton and returning today for a test.
That’s given its CoolDrive Mustang two full days of track running under its belt before 22 other cars have even turned a single lap (Matt Stone Racing and Dick Johnson Racing each had one car at QR today for shakedowns).
Blanchard and recruit Todd Hazelwood have spoken of trying to capitalise on that early learning to come out of the gates strongly at the Newcastle season-opener.
Asked if BRT – which is still hunting a maiden main game podium – can win in Gen3, Blanchard was philosophical.
“Who knows where anyone is going to be at this stage?” he told V8 Sleuth.
“It definitely changes the game a lot, it’s a big reset. There’s a lot of unknowns, so who knows.
“Just being first out on track doesn’t mean we’re going to be the fastest, but I feel like we have done everything we can to give ourselves the best possible chance.”
Supercars has said it will only share reliability/safety-related lessons, not performance, from team testing – something which should minimise the guinea pig effect for BRT.
“We want to try to leverage the advantage of getting out first but there’s a lot of very skilled teams with big resources that will be out on track soon, so we’re just doing what we can to make sure we’re in the best position possible and do everything we can do with the things we can control and see where we end up,” added Blanchard.
After today, BRT will next be in action at the category-wide Sydney Motorsport Park test day on February 22, ahead of the Thrifty Newcastle 500 across March 10-12.
