DARWIN SUPERCARS DRIVER COMPLETES BATHURST 1000 DEBUT

PRESS RELEASE/Bryce Fullwood Racing – Photo: Matthew Paul

Northern Territory’s only Supercars driver Bryce Fullwood has successfully finished his first Bathurst 1000, racing with Bigmate Racing at Mt Panorama. 

The 20-year-old drove alongside Todd Hazelwood to finish the race a credible 20th, in what was also the team’s debut at the Mountain. 

Fullwood reflected on the 161-lap race, in what was a dream come true for him. 

“For me this is a childhood dream … it is absolutely awesome to finish the race, whilst I made a little bit of a slip-up, we still finished ahead of some drivers and you can end your day a lot worse around this place,” Fullwood said. 

“I made a mistake that hurt us, but previous to that I was really happy with how we were going, we didn’t quite have the straight-line speed of the newer cars, but across the top the car was relatively competitive and the car was really comfortable throughout the day. 

“I’ve learned a lot of things after racing at Bathurst … I think the biggest thing would be to stay a little bit calmer and not try and drive 11-tenths all of the time, these races are really long and you definitely don’t need to be setting purple sectors all the way through.”

The young driver added that Darwin locals at the event supported him throughout his Bathurst debut. 

“Darwin is a huge motor sport town, obviously with Bathurst being the pinnacle of motor sport in Australia, I think everyone gets around it quite a lot and everyone from Darwin that’s down here at the track has come up and seen me and wished me a lot of luck,” Fullwood said. 

“The support was awesome. I’m sure everyone at home was right behind me.” 

Gold Coast will mark the end of Fullwood’s co-driver duties with the Bigmate Racing team, with the event next week on the streets of Surfers Paradise. 

“The kilometres in these cars is so hard to get and having done so much of it across the weekend and the Gold Coast coming up, it just helps so much,” Fullwood said. 

“While Super2 is extremely competitive, the Supercars Championship is extremely, extremely competitive … just trying to extract every little bit out of the car and driving with more experienced people, you learn more”

Like Sandown, Fullwood had double duties racing as both a co-driver in the Supercars Championship and competing in the Dunlop Super2 Series in the Middy’s Electrical Commodore. 

Unfortunately on Lap 3 Fullwood was out of the 250-kilometre Super2 race, after a strong charge early on starting from 12th. 

“I think we made a step forward with the car over the weekend, whilst we didn’t get to show it in the Super2 race, I think the car was not too bad,” Fullwood said. 

“Hopefully we can fit in a test day before Newcastle [Super2 finale], which might be a little bit hard on our tyre bank, but we’ll see how we go. 

“Newcastle is a pretty awesome track to drive around but very hard to pass on, so there’ll be a lot of emphasis on qualifying and I’ll have to make sure I really nail a lap so we can put ourselves in a good position.”

Fullwood will complete his PIRTEK Enduro Cup campaign at the Vodafone Gold Coast 600 on 19-21 October.

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