RESISTING temptation to stray from their gameplan proved critical in Triple Eight’s latest Bathurst 1000 success.
No matter how fast title rivals Erebus Motorsport went over a single lap, the Red Bull Ampol #97 crew and drivers Shane van Gisbergen/Richie Stanaway stayed laser-focused on performance in race trim.
It was a case of short-term pain for long-term gain.
At the end of a troublesome Friday, van Gisbergen only just snuck into the Top 10 Shootout, and his effort in the one-lap dash was a hefty 0.7252s slower than the time that secured pole for Kostecki.
EMPHATIC: Kostecki’s pole margin biggest since Lap of the Gods
But come Sunday, Triple Eight turned the tables, van Gisbergen and Stanaway going on to win by 19.9326s from Kostecki/David Russell.
Andrew Edwards, the #97’s mastermind engineer, explained how they’d built across the four days at Mount Panorama.
“There’s a temptation to know where you are, and when you’re down the bottom of the sheet you get anxiety,” Edwards admitted on the post-race broadcast.
“But we came here with a really specific plan. We weren’t going to chase it.
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“People were saying we were sandbagging; we weren’t. We had full tanks, we were trying to do race runs, we were looking after the car, not pushing. Even Shane’s short runs were at race pace.
“We wanted to work on the car, which you can see; the qual suffered.
“Erebus had an amazing, amazing one-lap car. I wasn’t sure we’d have the race pace, but still we built a lot of confidence from Richie’s run on Thursday and Shane’s run on Saturday.
“I think those two really set us up with the confidence that the race car would be alright.”
Confidence continued to rise throughout the first half of the race yesterday.
“When I saw Richie hanging on the back of Brodie there, it felt like we were in a good spot,” Edwards continued.
“Shane’s laps all looked nice and smooth, under control. Our full-tank car wasn’t very good, but once we got to mid-end of tank, I think it was much better.
“I felt like we were quite confident with the car we had because we didn’t change it very much. We did long runs so we didn’t do a lot of changes, but the pace was good.
“We knew we could look after the tyre, we weren’t sure we had the outright pace though.”
Previously a Brad Jones Racing stalwart, Edwards has now won the Great Race in successive years with van Gisbergen.
It was a tough day for Triple Eight’s other two Camaros, with gearshift mount issues taking both Craig Lowndes/Zane Goddard and Broc Feeney/Jamie Whincup out of contention, the latter combination particularly cruelly while running second late in the piece.
They ended up the last two cars classified in 23rd and 24th, the #88 ahead of the #888.
