BRAD Jones says his team has got plenty of work to do to get itself in contention for a maiden Bathurst 1000 victory.
BJR spearhead Andre Heimgartner has frequently featured towards the pointy end this season, including combining with Dale Wood to place fifth last time out at Sandown.
But it was slow-going for the Albury squad in the early stages at Mount Panorama.
Three of its four cars finished outside the top 20 in Practice 1 (Heimgartner being the exception in ninth) and all four were outside the top 20 in Practice 2 – including Dean Fiore crashing out and then being disqualified.
“We’re probably not going as well as we would like, if I’m honest,” Jones told V8 Sleuth late on Thursday.
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“But we’ll have a look through the data tonight and see what we can come up. The good thing is there’s a reasonable amount of track time here.”
Jones added: “A lot of our day’s focus was on race runs but the truth is, the cars look a bit too nervous and we need to settle them down to be as competitive as we want.”
Parity has been a hot topic all week; few from the Chevrolet side have spoken out since Ford’s proposed aero changes were rejected on Thursday morning.
Jones believes the sensible outcome was reached, with the prescribed process adhered to.
“It looked pretty even to me,” he said.
“It’s the first day, who knows what the weekend’s going to (hold). But one thing’s for sure: the Camaros weren’t 5km/h faster down the straights – I don’t think they were anyway.”
Among the general surprises from Thursday practice was the fact the Gen3 cars did not get all that close to the 300km/h barrier down Conrod Straight as had been expected.
“That was just what the sim said we’d get to but reality is different,” said Jones.
Practice 3 runs from 10-11am AEDT this morning.
