WILDCARD Richie Stanaway starred when the rain came down in Practice 4 at the 2022 Repco Bathurst 1000.
After a near three-year-hiatus, the 30-year-old is back this weekend thanks to a Boost Mobile-supported wildcard run by Erebus Motorsport.
Mechanical trouble with the car he shares with Greg Murphy in Practice 1 on Thursday and Practice 3 this morning had restricted Stanaway’s early running.
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Regardless, Stanaway spent much of the wet hour-long Practice 4 at or near the top of the timesheets, ending up in fourth place.
The performance was of little surprise to those familiar with Stanaway’s earlier work in Supercars.
He starred in the wet on debut as a co-driver with Tickford Racing at the Sandown 500 in 2016 and then at Bathurst in ’17, where he led a portion of the race in the Monster entry.
Triple Eight co-driver Garth Tander revealed during the TV broadcast of Practice 4 that the Red Bull squad had studied Stanaway’s previous Bathurst lines ahead of the weekend.
“They call it the go-kart line, traditionally you’d run off the line in go-karts, you run out in the marbles,” explained Tander.
“When you do your track walk you look at the track and you understand where the asphalt is effectively worn out (on the racing line).
“In the wet that’s not where you want to go. You want to go where the stones are nice and sharp still and the tyre can bite into those stones, so you run around the outside.
“We actually did a fair bit of research from when Richie Stanaway ran here in the wet a few years ago.
“He was clearly the fastest, he was running quite wide at Turn 1, quite wide at the Cutting, quite wide at Forrest’s Elbow.
“We did a lot of research coming here knowing the forecast was going to be quite wet, where to position the car and look at some alternate lines and trying that.
“That’s certainly what Shane (van Gisbergen) is doing right now.”
When subsequently asked about the team’s pre-event study of Stanaway’s lines, Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton said his team is always looking at its competitors.
“You look at that (Stanaway’s 2017 drive) for the wet, you look at (Chaz) Mostert’s car last year, how quick it was, not in the wet but the dry,” Dutton told V8 Sleuth.
“Full respect to all the cars up and down pit lane, all the information and knowledge you can gain you definitely do that.
“We don’t sit in a silo and think that we’re doing everything perfectly. We definitely analyse our competitors.”
Qualifying this afternoon is also set to take place in wet conditions.
