Brad Jones Racing heads into the Pirtek Enduro Cup looking for a breakthrough V8 Supercars long distance result at its 200th Championship round start.
Despite having a reputation as enduro specialists, the reality is the team based in Albury has never finished on the podium at the 500km Bathurst warm-up or won the Bathurst 1000 itself.
It gets the chance to start rectifying that this weekend at the Wilson Security Sandown 500, for which Fabian Coulthard and Luke Youlden in the Lockwood Racing Holden Commodore VF are among the leading contenders.
Teammates Jason Bright and Andrew Jones in the Team BOC entry will also be a strong chance for the podium.
BJR’s previous best 500km result was a fourth in 2003 for team co-owner Brad Jones and John Bowe, sharing a Ford Falcon. But BJR has twice finished second at Bathurst via Jones and Scotsman John Cleland in a Falcon in 2001 and the late Jason Richards and Cameron McConville in a Commodore in 2009.
The team’s reputation for being enduro specialists grew out of its early years in V8 Supercars racing when it would almost invariably be on the pace at Bathurst whether doing well the rest of the season or not.
In part that grew out of a strong strategic ability, born of its involvement in NASCAR and AUSCAR racing and an understanding of how to best exploit safety cars.
“We were usually very, very competitive every single year in the enduros no matter how competitive we were in the sprint races,” Jones told v8supercars.com.au.
While Jones concedes that strategy advantage isn’t so pronounced these days, the advent of the New Generation race car in 2013 has delivered the team the ability to be more competitive more evenly across the season.
It finished third in last year’s Teams’ Championship and is running fourth in 2014. Coulthard runs fifth in the 2014 Drivers’ Championship and Bright – who has displayed pace if not consistency – runs 10th.
At Sandown the BJR cars have not traditionally enjoyed the many 90 degree turns, tending to perform better on flowing tracks such as Bathurst. But Jones is confident this weekend can mark a breakthrough.
“I think the stop-start nature of the joint is not as conducive for results for the setup that we run,” he conceded. “But I think we will be strong. At one stage last year Fabian came out of the pits in front of (eventual race winner Jamie Whincup’s co-driver) Paul Dumbrell and drove away from him. I only use that as an example because it shows we can produce the goods all things being even and we have clicked on the right setup.
“A win is going to be hard, but if we get on to the right setup pretty early that will make the difference. Strategy also plays a pretty important part at Sandown because the lap is over in one minute 10 seconds, and so you can’t afford to go a lap down.”
Jones said he was encouraged by the team’s performance at the Sydney Motorsport Park 400, where Coulthard qualified second and finished third in the 200km mini-marathon Race 28, while Bright finished sixth despite having to queue in pitlane.
The results were indicative of the team’s progress dialling the nervousness out of the new generation Triple Eight-sourced front ends in both the Lockwood and BOC entries. They have a slightly different geometry to the predecessor design, which is in part intended to ease the pressure on the power steering systems.
However, engine horsepower upgrades won’t be coming for BJR from Noonan Race Engines for Sandown, which Jones concedes is a potential issue.
“Sandown is very much a circuit that relies heavily on engine and so you have to have everything going for you,” Jones said. “But I still think we are in pretty good shape. It will be hard to tell until we actually get there.”
Jones admitted a win at Bathurst would mean more to him than a result at Sandown. As a driver he finished on the podium four times and in the top 10 another five times in the 1000km classic but never won.
This year’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 marks the 20th anniversary of one of his finest drives at Mount Panorama, when he took the Holden Racing Team Commodore he was sharing with debutante Crag Lowndes from the edge of being lapped to seconds from taking the race lead. Lowndes then jumped in the car and nearly won the race after a heated battle with Bowe.
“Bathurst is certainly my personal target,” Jones said. “But we want to win every race we compete in.”
