While neither of the CrownBet Darwin TripleCrown’s races went the way of Nissan pilot Andre Heimgartner, the 22 year old Kiwi says there are still positives to take away from the event.
The Melbourne resident qualified the #7 Plus Fitness Racing Altima in seventh for Saturday’s race and 12th on Sunday, after a P9 effort in practice on Friday followed improvements across the day.
Despite the strong qualifying results and good car pace, both races saw Heimgartner forced to manage his entry back through the field to recover for 16th after difficult opening laps.
“We started off the weekend with balance issues in the first practice session but worked hard to make gains across the day to end up ninth fastest by the end of it,” Heimgartner explained.
“We then did more work to fine-tune and find more speed on the green tyre, and we had some luck with that ahead of qualifying on Saturday, bringing it home P7.
“When it came to the race though we had a difficult start and dropped a few places, it was a bit of chaos there into the first corner and we had a lot of hard work ahead of us to recover. We did make some good passes which was fun and we had some good speed, but losing those spots off the line did really hurt us.
“Dilan and I put some more work into the balance of the car and we had better race pace on Sunday after qualifying P12, but turn five on that first lap did not go well at all when the guys inside of me had a bit of a push and shove and all moved over, leaving me with nowhere to go except off the track at considerable speed. I got ran wide there yesterday too, it has just been a bogey corner for me all weekend it seems.
“That sent us a long way back and we had to catch back up, so to get it back from 24th after that off up to 16th I think was a pretty strong effort.
“While that was a good recovery considering it is certainly a bit frustrating as we definitely had better race pace this weekend. but it was one of those weekends where you just can’t seem to take a trick.
“There are lots of positives though still and we will put our heads down and see what else we can learn and apply ahead of Townsville in a few week’s time.”
Heimgartner will next be on-track with Nissan Motorsport for the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at the Watpac Townsville 400 across July 4-8, 2018.
For more on Andre Heimgartner, visit www.andreheimgartner.com
Comments