Jaxon Evans has left the Ned Whiskey Tasmania Supersprint with plenty of positives despite enduring a tough weekend of results during his debut outing at Symmons Plains Raceway.
The New Zealander’s first appearance on the Apple Isle saw him end the weekend by being taken out during Sunday’s outing midway through the race.
While results were less than ideal for the Repco Supercars Championship rookie, Evans’ general pace in all practice and qualifying sessions, along with the overall performance of the whole Brad Jones Racing stable across the weekend, there were major signs of improvement.
Starting off with 21st in Friday’s sole practice session, Evans improved to 19th in Saturday morning’s wet practice session before Qualifying in the same position after making it through to Q2.
A decent showing in the opening race of the weekend with multiple promising moments was marred by a 15-second penalty which demoted Evans to the back of the field.
Not to be deterred, Evans then produced one of his most impressive sessions for the year, putting the #12 SCT Logistics Chevrolet Camaro in ninth during Sunday morning’s sole practice session.
Evans’ pace was on show once again during Sunday’s qualifying session by progressing to Q2, but an error during his final flying lap prevented him from sneaking into Q3 -– the rookie eventually settled for P18.
In the race itself, Evans had shown promising signs and made a couple of impressive overtakes before being taken out by a rival on the front straight – the contact sending Evans into the barrier and out of the race with significant damage to the car.
Following on from this weekend, it’s back-to-back events for Evans, who will link up with Arise Racing at the inaugural GT Festival at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.
Evans will be behind the wheel of the Ferrari 296 GT3 with Elliot Schutte for fourth round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS season at Phillip Island on August 23-25.
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