MEDIA RELEASE/Team 18 – Photos: supplied

DEWALT Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and Toyota Forklifts’ Scott Pye wrapped up a promising first day of on-track action at the Perth SuperSprint with a promising practice session in fifth and 15th respectively at CARCO.com.au Raceway.

The Team 18 drivers wasted no time in getting acquainted with the demanding Wanneroo circuit, maximising the sole 90-minute session to their advantage.

The session was interrupted with three red-flag periods, however the team used this time to make crucial setup adjustments to optimise car setup ahead of qualifying and racing on Saturday.

Winterbottom, who rolled out with the number 600 on the DEWALT Camaro, showed strong speed in the closing stages to finish the day fifth fastest, while Pye finished in 15th in a competitive session with only half a second splitting the first 23 cars.

Team 18 is back in action on Saturday for qualifying from 11:10am before Race 7 of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship at 3:45pm, which will be Mark Winterbottom’s milestone 600th start. All the action can be viewed live on Fox Sports and Kayo.

Mark Winterbottom, driver #600 DEWALT Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Practice: 5th (54.7353)

“Not a bad day. I think we definitely improved the car from the start to the end. I’m still looking for a little bit of balance in the car, but we’re fifth, so it was good to have top five pace, and our last lap I locked a tyre in the last corner when I was up on a good lap.

“It’s not easy to drive, but relatively fast, so we just got to try and make it more predictable. If we can do that and qualify well tomorrow, then it puts us in a good position to race, but race pace is the next challenge. We need to make the tyres last a bit longer, so that’s work for us to do.

“I thought the long session was all right. It was just a different way to attack it, but I didn’t mind it.

“It felt like a really good practice session, but I’ll probably want two, one and a half hours now being greedy because the cars are really fun to drive, so I enjoyed being in it.

“It was a big session, but we now we go to bed and roll out tomorrow, drive to the track at 60ks an hour and then attack it at 300k in anger on lap one in quali.”

Scott Pye, driver #20 Toyota Forklifts Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Practice: 15th (54.8921)

“It’s not too bad of a day. We ran a few sets of tyres and we didn’t ultimately end up where we wanted to be, but I think the biggest thing at the moment we’re seeing is the degradation is quite high.

“I think this weekend the race is going to be about tyre life and of course you need to qualify at the front, but there’s some cars that seem to be really hanging onto their tyres very well.

“For us, I think we’re closer over one lap than we are in race pace at the moment. We’ve spent some time tonight after that practice session going through everything and ultimately trying to tidy up the car. I think that if we can achieve that in the few areas we’re looking for, then we’ll be okay for the race tomorrow and hopefully qualify somewhere in the top ten.

“I think the 90 minute session was not too bad. There was a red flag, which gave us all an opportunity to get out of the car for a moment and run through a really quick debrief so that you still get that opportunity to talk across both cars and see what you’ve learned in the first part of the session. I really enjoyed the last part of the session, being able to put tyres on. It would be great if we had more tyres so that you could do more runs, but ultimately the 90 minutes worked out okay.”

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• BJR POSITIVE AFTER FRIDAY RUNNING IN PERTH

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