Teams testing at Queensland Raceway in preparation for enduros

The majority of the V8 Supercars teams have been testing at Queensland Raceway on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for the upcoming endurance races. But the test did not play out as planned for reigning champion Jamie Whincup who debuted a new chassis, suffering from vibration issues.

“Not the ideal lead up you’d plan for – I’ve never been at a test day where we’ve done so few laps on a car. But that said, we’re confident we can have it in fine form for Sandown. They can be little buggers to find sometimes – and pinpointing it was a nightmare,” said Mark Dutton, engineer for Triple Eight Race Engineering to v8supercars.com.au.

Present at the same time as Triple Eight Race Engineering was Tekno Autosports with Shane van Gisbergen and co-driver/team boss Jonathon Webb, enjoying a trouble free test day.

“It was good just to get comfortable in the car – just run around, make sure everything feels at home again, which it did. I think as far as pace I’m where I need to be to be competitive next weekend,” said Webb.

A day earlier saw several other teams on track, including Volvo Polestar Racing duo Scott McLaughlin and Alexandre Prémat who finished fifth overall in the Pirtek Endurance Cup last year.

”Straight away Alex was comfortable and within ten to twenty laps he was basically on my pace. Today our main focus was to see that he was comfortable with the car and I think we’ve got a really good shot for the enduros,” said McLaughlin.

”It is like I never left V8 Supercars because I jumped in the car and bam, with the lap times, which was pretty good. It was super fast, I was as quick as Scotty, so I’m pretty happy with that! I’m looking forward to Sandown and to be racing… it feels like I never left the car,” said Prémat.

Championship leader Mark Winterbottom ran with co-driver Steve Owen for Prodrive Racing Australia, leaving the test day optimistic.

“It was good, we had a good day just did all the things we needed to do and wanted to try. Pretty productive – we did a lot of test starts, a lot of driver change practice, Steve was comfortable in the car, so you run all the things that get ready for the enduros and now we feel like we’re ready to race … we seem to have come away with everything we wanted to achieve,” said Winterbottom.

Nissan Motorsport had Todd Kelly and Britain’s Alex Buncombe at the test, sporting new colours on the #7 Nissan Altima.

”Obviously last year there was lots to learn in a short space of time – the car, the team, the circuits and the way to approach the racing in this series. It was a different challenge than that in Europe but I hugely enjoyed it. I’ve kept a close eye on the season so far in front of my TV back in Europe and as always the racing looks super close and exciting,” said Buncombe.

The first endurance round of the 2015 V8 Supercars starts on September 11-13th with the Sandown 500.