SUPERCHEAP AUTO RACING FRIDAY AT THE BEND

MEDIA RELEASE/Triple Eight Race Engineering – Photos: Velocity Magazine

Zach Bates/Craig Lowndes – Car #888
Practice 1 – 27th (1:53.5116)
Practice 2 – 9th (1:51.2807)
Practice 3 – 15th (1:50.0409)

Zach Bates – Car #888
“Since my first Supercars round at Queensland Raceway I’ve learned that everything’s still crazy, but I’m getting used to it, so that’s fine.”

“It’s been a great day here, obviously teaming up with Craig is a highlight, great teammate to have in the car.
We’re just getting everything sorted together. It’s a long weekend, it’s only Friday, so we’ve just got to run through our processes.”

“Looking at today we’ve got a bit of time to find no doubt about that. The two Red Bull Ampol Racing cars are rapid so looking at that as a benchmark I’ve just got to tune myself up a bit and look at what we can do better.”

“For me I can chat to the likes of Craig obviously, then Will, Broc, Jamie and Scott tonight and say where are you finding your speed and what can I do for tomorrow in the practice and qualifying sessions. That’s definitely the plan. They all have so much incredible insight. So if they’re willing to spare five minutes it’s definitely going to be something on my list to do.”

Craig Lowndes – Car #888
“2018 was my last full-time year, last time I was here, so this is my first time this weekend in the Gen 3 car at The Bend. It’s a little different to what I remember, but a lot of fun.”

“Compared to the laps I did at Queensland Raceway with Zach it’s a completely different track. I think the high speed, long duration of the corners here is a little bit different to Queensland Raceway. But, you know, in the end the car is really nice. We worked on it over the course of the day and we’re coming out of day one really confident, really positive, and looking forward to tomorrow.

“We’re taking a lot out of today. We had a few little issues in practice one but the team did a great job getting on top of that. Then once we got that sorted we got multiple laps strung together… it’s all about rhythm around here because it’s such a long lap. So really for me it’s obviously to get the race car sorted between the two of us Zach and I. Tomorrow we’ll work on that. We’ll probably do some longer runs in both drives and then we’ll see where we end up at the end overall. It’s just all about getting confidence around this track and both of us are still working on that.”

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