Porsche New Zealand scholarship driver Tom Bewley is confident of continuing his strong performance from Darwin when the Australian Porsche Carrera Cup championship resumes at Queensland Raceway this weekend.
The teenage rookie finished inside the top six in both races last time out but with a capacity 30-car field, a shorter track and some very experienced drivers returning to the series, Bewley admits repeating his Darwin performances will be more of a challenge.
“I want to be aiming for that top-eight in qualifying. There’s a lot of fast guys that have done plenty of laps around there so a half-a-tenth [of a second] will maybe cover three or four spots. It’ll be really hard to match those guys but I feel if we get the set-up in the window, we can definitely be trying for the top five positions,” said Bewley ahead of the third round.
“I think 30 cars this weekend and a full grid for the rest of the season so it’s going to be really hard. The laps around one-minute eight-seconds so it’ll be really hard to find the space with so many cars on track. The first run is going to be really important and hopefully we’ll just find that space for that second run on such a short track.’
The 18-year-old Havelock North resident can only travel for a single test day before each round of the Australian Porsche Equity-One Carrera Cup Championship but he is more familiar with Queensland Raceway, having raced there in the junior Porsche Sprint Challenge series last year.
However, the newer model Porsche this year is a different car that also uses an ABS braking system, introduced to the category from this season.
“Everything from last year has to be thrown out the window which is always hard going to a track where most Australians have done millions of laps around Queensland Raceway as it’s one of the most popular places to test at. I’ve previously only driven it about three times,” he said.
“But really looking forward to getting into the weekend, we’re lucky to have two practice sessions to get in a few more laps to figure it out and one crack in the afternoon on a new tyre.”
Following the two practice sessions on Friday, qualifying takes place on Saturday along with the first of two 45-minute races, which Bewley prefers over the shorter 25-minute races at some rounds.
“If we do get a safety car [period] you still get more laps and that also gives more of a chance if you do have a bad qualifying, you can drive through the field.”
The last round at Darwin was Bewley’s introduction to the longer races. He missed the 45-minute race at the Melbourne Grand Prix back in March after a start-line mechanical failure.
“In the first race at Darwin it was more trying to learn how to save the tyre because I’d never done a run that long before as I missed the one at Melbourne, so going into this weekend I’ve got a little bit more up my sleeve on how to control the tyre for the 45-minute race.
“My other strong point at Darwin was saving those brakes in the heat and since QR is a really stop-go track it’s going to be really important to make sure I’ve got heaps of brakes for the second race as well.”
From his pre-event test day last week Bewley believes they’ve found a good race package.
“Not so much on the new tyre pace but on the old tyre I feel it was really, really strong judging from the pace we saw from other people. Struggled on the new tyre but when we went to the old tyre we found a really nice set-up and a really good balance so I’m looking forward to using that in the races and trying to refine that a little bit.
“We really need to work on the qualifying set-up as that’s where we struggled.”
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