Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Townsville 500 daily: Sunday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Sunday edition of our daily podcast from the Townsville 500. My name is Andrew Van Lee, and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, that is a wrap on the Townsville 500, at least with the on-track action, a bit of off-track action, probably gonna go down at the mad cow once we finish recording here, I think. But not a classic race, so to speak, but one that I think Brody Kastecki would feel pretty satisfied with. Like he's been Fast all weekend, particularly over a lap. Felt that, you know, like a win potentially got away from him with the pit stop issue in yesterday's race, and it felt like today was just a culmination of everything they've done all weekend, him and Dick Johnson racing in a really dominant win. It was an absolute master class, except for the celebration. Yep. Donging the wall there while doing a burnout, ⁓ probably not his best moment. No. It was an aggressive tip in ⁓ He didn't get tempted. As soon as he did it and with the camera position, I thought, ⁓ the wall's pretty close here. You actually said that you actually said, Wow, he's really tipped it in here and then ⁓ into the wall he went, joining Will Davison as ⁓ people who have crashed while doing burnouts in Townsville. And it was interesting, Brody said that he had ⁓ a mate ⁓ who's involved in the Summer Nat stuff, ⁓ that he was trying to impress. So that sort of explained it. But yes, outside of that, ⁓ Just a brilliant performance, and they did make the most of what was a really good car all weekend. There was probably three standout cars from the very first qualifying session at least on Friday. Yeah the ⁓ 17 car of Brody, the six of Cam Waters, and the 19 of Matt Payne. Yeah. And as you say, they executed in that ⁓ last race Brody. It was really that middle stint. Obviously, they went for the undercut, they went aggressive. ⁓ but then there was a there was a middle stint there where Cam Waters had like nine lap younger tires and he hardly made any inroads yeah into him in the whole stint. So that's where it was one. Yeah Cam mentioned that in the in the press conference he said Brody's middle stint is just what sort of took it took it away ⁓ took it away from us. yeah so Matt Payne ended up second. It probably potentially could have been a bit tighter between the nineteen and the six at the end there, but this is something we should talk about. ⁓ Cam Waters didn't take on enough fuel. ⁓ in his second stop and really had to fuel save hard at the end of that race. And that he really feels like he said there was no way anyone was catching Brody today, but he feels that he could have had a really good fight with Matt Payne towards the end of that race had he not been in this real fuel saving mode. And we kind of thought initially that there'd been an issue at that last stop in terms of fuel delivery or something like that. But turns out it was just effectively a a miscalculation or whatever you want to call it. There's that not enough fuel was put in the car. For whatever reason, not through any technical reason. ⁓ I feel like we've talked a lot about fuel saving this weekend. It feels like it's been a really prominent topic, but then talking to some people at the end of the day and clarifying with Cam, 'cause he talked about the fact, well, this is what we have with the churns, it is it ha it it has been an ongoing issue. Like fuel conservation has become part of these longer sprint races. And the reason why it's related to the churns is because the flow out of them's not linear. The further down the churn you get, the slower it's going in. So the reward for underfilling is is greater than if it was a linear flow. So yeah, Cam did ⁓ tear up the churns in the ⁓ in the press conference afterwards. Obviously they came in and replaced the ⁓ the fuel towers ⁓ for these this sprint part of the season. the towers are really cumbersome and require a lot of setup and obviously they're they're bigger and have to be dragged around the country. ⁓ so the teams liked the churns, but ⁓ yeah, there was a bit of talk today about ⁓ whether they're actually a good thing or not. Yeah, 'cause I guess it comes down to what the the racing product, right? Because you know, we always had we always had the fuel drop which was introduced to help equalize effectively equalize fuel economy ⁓ between different brands. That became less of an issue, although it is something that's back in the spotlight at the moment, probably because of the fact we're down this churn path and it does make a difference ⁓ your economy. But you know, I guess I think it's a conversation we had we've had plenty of times on podcasts before about when the fuel drop was still there. Like why is this still here? Why do they still do this? But it did provide that level playing field. That's how much fuel you had to put in the car. So there was no temptation To shortfill and try and get to the end, yeah, in an economy race because you couldn't do that anyway. So yeah, it's always I I don't know we're necessarily seeing it yet, but it is something that, you know, you don't want conserving to be a big part of motorsport. I I don't I d you know, w when you're talking about being really tire limited or fuel limited or whatever, and you don't have we don't have the pit lane speed limits and that sort of stuff to you know offset what you can actually save if you do go into saving mode and you just then run the risk of drivers not driving their cars as fast as they can go and that not really being the point of motorsport. Yeah, ⁓ I'd be interested to hear more opinions on it, but I don't feel like this weekend the racing was hurt too much by it. No. There was still a lot of overtaking, a lot of hard racing. ⁓ and even just talking about that critical stint in the race where Brody ⁓ really won won it, it wasn't because Cam had to save fuel in that stint. No. That was just pure performance from the driver in the car. So yeah, I I don't know whether it hurt it that much, but it's an interesting topic. Yeah. Yeah. No, I certainly don't mean this weekend. I mean just fundamentally if it is something that becomes an issue and it's something that teams try to stretch further in terms of like, you know, ⁓ how how far can we go with this, then It runs the risk of damaging the racing product. But and I guess it would have been nice to see Cam going hammer and tongs in that last stint. But again, that's his insight on it. we don't know the numbers, we don't know all that sort of stuff. Obviously, there was a ⁓ a bit of a miscalculation from the team or that perhaps they just tried too hard to to save that fuel or whatever. ⁓ anyway, ⁓ best Toyota home was Chaz Mostard, who came home ahead of his teammate Ryan Wood. Woody was actually looked really speedy very early in the race, like pulled a big move. Around the outside of turn two on the first lap, almost got it well, I think did momentarily get in the lead. Cam Waters just managed to reposition his car into the next corner to take the lead back over, but then he dropped back to fifth. But you'd have to think given the fact that, you know, we go into so many of these events with a question mark over the Toyota package in terms of how it's going to perform. It's first time on a proper street circuit. All the valves seem to be, you know, where they should be at the end of the weekend. Like you re not on Andre's one. ⁓ yes, okay. That's very true. All right, we'll get to that in a minute. But they did have to change two Walk and Shore motors ⁓ on Friday night. ⁓ that's true. As a air quotes precaution. Well so they'd clearly seen something in there that they didn't like. Well, they got the cars home. They came home fourth and fifth, and I reckon they'd be pretty happy with that from a performance point of view, if nothing else. Well, the other thing about Woody's Day or weekend was that ⁓ Boy, he's unhappy frequently in these car races, and he lets poor old Richard Harris on the radio know about it. It's something that Murph, ⁓ Greg Murphy, ⁓ Woody's mentor has talked about ⁓ working on ⁓ keeping Ryan a bit more centered during these races. But yeah, he's an emotional cat in that car. He sure is. He sure is. ⁓ Brock Feeney, sixth place. You wouldn't normally think that Triple Eight would be going, Hey, that was a pretty good day. We qualified Fifth order. I can't remember exactly where he was fifth in qualifying. I think. Where did he actually start the race? He started the race in seventh. Right. So, you know, seventh into six. We probably didn't you know, y you felt like based on their some of the race pace they've shown when they've qualified back in the field that they might have been able to move a little bit further forward. That obviously gets harder to to to move through the field the closer to the front you get 'cause everyone's getting a lot faster, but Yeah, a sixth for Brock, an eighth for Will Brown. And we had a just had a chat with Dardo at the end of the day. They're like they're actually pretty happy with that result, which is again a pretty untriple eight sort of approach to things. But it's just where they're at at the moment as they try to get their heads around this Ford package. Yeah, Mark Dutton spoke a lot about taking big swings this weekend to try to learn some things. And that's not necessarily the off talked about final strategy of just building for that. It's the fact that they have been struggling to ⁓ really understand this Mustang race car and as as he talks about it, building the toolbox so that they know how to solve problems. Yeah. ⁓ but yeah, ⁓ two events in a row really where they haven't looked like a a proper triple eight and this format with the finals does allow them to take these big swings and not really have it cost them so much. Yeah. ⁓ the best player Chevies today were Jack LeBrock in ninth. That was a pretty important result for him because it put him back into the into the top ten of the points. ⁓ pretty solid weekend for Jack across the board, to be honest. And the same should be said about ⁓ Jaden Ojada. He was ⁓ he was tenth today. ⁓ he was in the shootout again. It's kind of you feel it's really building with juice. Like it's not like, ⁓ wow, he's banged in the shootout. It's kind of starting to feel like a pretty normal thing to see him up that end of the field. Which is putting even more spotlight on the fact that Declan Fraser, his teammate, is really struggling. Yeah. ⁓ he had ⁓ career best qualifying of eleventh on Friday, but from then onwards the wheels really fell off it. And ⁓ he had some complaints about steering feel and they changed a rack through the weekend. I think he struggled a lot with ⁓ controlling the front tire temp, which is just critical on these cars in these races, especially at a a warmer event like Townsville. Yeah. But ⁓ yeah, it's certainly a a tail of two halves in that premier garage. Yep, no, that's definitely true. And team eighteen, I mean that's what a roller coaster of a weekend for them, you know, like a ⁓ a a pretty slow start on Friday coming off the back of that win for Anton Di Pasquale and Darwin. And then Anton goes and does an amazing job of fuel saving and and and the team did an amazing job of the strategy. ⁓ yesterday to get him up to second place and then today they were just kind of back mired in the midfield. Yeah, I don't think I had any notes about team eighteen today. Anton obviously got involved in that today. Yep, you're right. ⁓ which was a shame for him. Talking about the front tirp stuff, he's clearly somebody that does excel in managing that stuff. ⁓ so he had that podium yesterday and obviously a win in Darwin, but yeah we didn't really get to see much out of them today. No, not at all. ⁓ what else do you want talk about? Well I guess thinking of the turn one incident, obviously Aaron Cameron taken out of contention in that. And then later in the lap James Golding, this double BRT trouble. He got spun around by Cooper Murray, who had ⁓ Jackson Walls lunging him at the time. But ⁓ the real consequence out of all that is the fact that Jimmy Golding's the one that's fallen out of the 10. Yeah. ⁓ so that that really strong start to the season that those guys had has gone away a little bit. They still had speed at points this weekend. Yeah. But ⁓ yeah, he's now on the outside looking in. Yep. Absolutely. And I think ⁓ I think it was costly for them in the teams championship as well. Haven't gone over the points. I think MSR was a bit of a winner this weekend. They banked some pretty good points from a team perspective and ⁓ and I think they're moving a a couple of garages maybe towards the ⁓ The classier end of the pit lane. ⁓ Yeah, I guess just talking about Pit Lane, the other story of the day really was Grove with another issue in a pit stop that cost Kyle Allen quite badly, and that's something that again Brenton Grove was was talking about ⁓ this evening of they really need to ⁓ sharpen up that part of their game. Obviously we saw it a couple of times with Matt Payne in Darwin. ⁓ These teams do run varying iterations of the system where the the wheel changes gun tells the the pit boom via electronic lights when when the job's done on the wheel. So whether they need to go back and review all of that stuff because ⁓ yeah, any mistakes those guys are making now are r is really highlighted because the fact that it's always changing the top five or the podium ⁓ because they've got fast enough cars to be at the front of the field. And that's exactly what Britain said in the press conference. And he was quite up front about the fact that they're just not executing that operationally, he said we're just still not doing the job. And as you pointed out, you know, like when you're at the front of the field, everyone sees these things. There's things you can get away with when you're when you're a midfield team and nobody really notices or it doesn't make any major impact on on the meaningful outcome of the race. But, you know, that's That team is definitely a powerhouse at the moment. Like they ⁓ in terms of car speed, they're right there. ⁓ Matt Payne leading the drivers' championship by ninety two points now. So he's really ⁓ in the yeah in the driver's seat for this sprint cup with two rounds to go. Yeah. So he's leading that, they're leading the team's championship and ⁓ very deservedly so. That's ⁓ that's all you can really say on it. They are the team to beat at the moment. I mean, coming back to our conversation with With Mark Dutton, you know, he was talking about the fact that a team like Groves, with the knowledge they have of the Mustang package, they're in the refinement stage every time they go into a weekend. Like they know they've got the toolbox and they're making very small changes to get the car or keep the car right in the window. Whereas the triple eight approach at the moment is, let's just try something, see what it does. Cause then we've learned what it does. ⁓ so yeah, di very different approaches. But, you know, the beauty, again, as we were talking about the finals thing is that It could all come together right at the end of the year and be a pretty spectacular fight for the championship. And with Groves, they've got two bullets in the gun with ⁓ Matt Payne and Kai Allen. Yep. Where if you look at DJR, yes, Roland Gray got a shootout yesterday, but again, he wasn't in the mix at all today. It's still ⁓ it's a one-card team fighting there with Brody. Yep, it sure is. All right, I think we're gonna leave it there and have a shower and head to the Mad Cow for the ⁓ Speed Cafe After party, ⁓ make sure you stay tuned to speakcafe.com tomorrow we will have all of the fallout and reaction ⁓ from the Sunday in Townsville and full credit to the noise we'll be back in this podcast feed on Tuesday morning.