Andre Heimgartner has stormed to two season-best results this weekend at the CrownBet Darwin Triple Crown (Hidden Valley Raceway, Northern Territory) with race results of 18th and 12th.
The weekend seemed to be going pear-shaped early for the 21 year old Kiwi, with power steering issues seeing the Melbourne-resident spending the majority of both practice sessions in the Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport garage.
Heimgartner wouldn’t let the lack of laps on Friday stop him however. Saturday would see the issues rectified, and after a 15 minute practice session, he would qualify a season-best 18th in the #3 ABRO/Repair Management Australia Commodore before coming home 18th in the 42 lap race – his best race result (at that time) of an issue-plagued year to date.
On Sunday, Heimgartner qualified 15th and would go on to convert that into a 12th position during a tumultuous 60 lap race which included a number of big incidents for his fellow competitors – another season-best qualifying and race result.
The Darwin event was the first for Heimgartner working with his new engineer – V8 Supercar great Campbell Little.
“Having Campbell Little join the team recently as the dedicated engineer for my entry and the second engineer for the team has been a real boost,” said Heimgartner, who was the second quickest driver down the straight during Sunday’s race.
“He has such vast experience and has worked with the top drivers in the category, and while Barry Hay did a great job while also managing the team, having that dedicated attention definitely helps and allowed us this weekend to lift the game in the #3 in both qualifying and the race.
“The weekend certainly had plenty of carnage from beginning to end and Sunday was no exception – in just the opening lap two or three cars were taken out completely and I was lucky to stay out of trouble and bring the car home without a scratch.
“Like yesterday, we lost a pit of time in the pit stop and had some radio dramas which means there was definitely potential for a higher result – perhaps even a top ten today – but even so I am really happy with how the weekend has gone once we got past Friday’s issues, hopefully we can carry this forward into Townsville and keep improving.”
Heimgartner’s attention now turns to the Castrol EDGE Townsville 400 across July 8-10, 2016.
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