Encouraged by his speed and podium finish at the grand finale, V8 Supercars stalwart Jason Bright has declared next season will be his best shot at winning the Championship in years.
Bright and teammate Fabian Coulthard both believe small outfit Brad Jones Racing will again be in a position to challenge the big guns in 2014.
“I think we can go into next year confident that I can give it the best crack at a Championship for a long time,” Bright told v8supercars.com.au.
“I’m confident, as we were strong at a street track for the first time (in Sydney).”
Bright didn’t succeed straight out of the box at the Clipsal 500 in 2013, but BJR had a stranglehold on second event Tasmania, where he and Coulthard won all three races between them.
The following event in New Zealand became one of the most memorable and loved moments of the season, when Bright accumulated the most points with victory in the final race, to take home the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy. A prize he desperately wanted to win for his team, it was more than the Championship’s fairytale moment – it catapulted Bright up from 12th to sixth in the points standings, one position below Coulthard, demonstrating the team was a force to be reckoned with.
The Team BOC driver climbed as high as fourth this year before dropping away from the leaders.
“We had a tough last part of the season,” Bright said.
“We had some speed… I had some disasters, at the Gold Coast and Phillip Island blowing a tyre – and Winton ending up in the mud – so those three races moved us from challenging for fourth to seventh or eighth.”
Teammate Coulthard also had difficulties in the latter half of 2013 and ended up finishing just seven points shy of the top five.
His final race weekend saw a gear linkage break on Sunday and late race contact with Shane van Gisbergen on Saturday. Adding insult to injury, Coulthard felt that contact had cost him fifth place overall, which van Gisbergen took.
“You’re always going to have bad rounds here and there, no one’s going to have a perfect season,” he said. “Look at Jamie (Whincup) at Townsville, they had a shocker.”
The Lockwood racer also identified a suspension failure at the Gold Coast event as a key setback in the second half of the season.
“You’ve just got to finish races – we did a considerable amount of that but obviously the Gold Coast killed us the most.
“Then with Shane, that cost me a whole heap of points and that’s life… I knew where I had to be to finish fifth in the Championship – I was racing him in the Championship.
“I’ve got good confidence (for 2014), it’s just disappointing to finish the season the way we have.”
Despite being a small team fighting amongst heavyweights, Coulthard knows the crew members have their eyes on the prize next year.
“We’ve got a lot of areas we can improve and we know that. We’ve just got to dot our i’s cross the t’s, do it all right on the day and be there or thereabouts come the end of next year.
“Even when you’re not racing, you’re thinking about it.
“These boys may have a bit of time off over Christmas but they’re always thinking about what we can do, how we can make the car better, what we have to do to be more consistent. You don’t ever stop thinking about it.”
Coulthard and Bright finished sixth and seventh respectively in the 2013 V8 Supercars Championship.
