While TEKNO Autosports has both co-drivers signed, they won’t be appearing in today’s co-driver portion of practice. In fact, at this stage they won’t be appearing until the Sandown 500, the first of the endurance races.
TEKNO announced Marc Lieb (to be paired with Jonathon Webb) and Jeroen Bleekemolen last month.
At this stage driver and team owner Jonathon Webb said he wasn’t sure whether they would be able to get the pair out before the 500.
“If we can get them out earlier we will, but at the moment they’re so busy with what they’re doing and the time involved to fly over, it makes it pretty tough,” he said.
However, given Lieb’s performance as an international co-driver at the Gold Coast event last year, Webb isn’t too concerned about his ability to master the Car of the Future quickly.
“I’m not too worried, Marc particularly – he hadn’t done Gold Coast at all, but last year came straight out into the car with me and was pretty much the quickest co-driver all weekend. He should pick it up. These cars are going to be a little bit more user-friendly for him, so it should be fine.”
While many co-drivers have commented the COTF is similar to the V8 Supercar of old, in the week Andrew Jones mentioned he found it quite different.
“A lot of it probably depends on what they drove last year, what previous V8 they had been in,” Webb said.
“For us, as far as Triple Eight’s concerned, they’ve done a really good job of keeping it as close to the old car as possible.
“I think again for Marc, who’s only driven a Triple Eight car last year, he’ll jump into my car and will be quick straight off the bat.”
Given the team’s co-drivers are not participating today, the two TEKNO Holden Commodores – Webb’s running Darrell Lea branding and teammate Shane van Gisbergen’s with the VIP Petfoods livery – will sit in the garage while other co-drivers have the 30-minute hit-out.
The first 30 minutes of each of the day’s practice sessions are reserved for co-drivers only.
As TEKNO tested at the Queensland Raceway last week, Webb felt losing 30 minutes today wouldn’t affect them. However, he believes it does mean some teams are advantaged.
“In Townsville for instance, where the co-drivers ran before the (main) guys went out, it’s another half hour of testing. In some of the quick cars, like the Triple Eight cars, you’ve got (Paul) Dumbrell and Luffy (Warren Luff) who are really strong drivers, and you know their feedback is going to be accurate in what they tell you.
“You can tune the car straight away, so that is definitely an advantage for those guys.”
Webb had a tough run at the last event, the Sucrogen Townsville 400, while van Gisbergen was strong and finished on the podium.
“We tried a heap of different things and got a bit of direction,” Webb said of the team’s recent test day. “So we’ll find out tomorrow how it’s going to work. It was a more useful day than I thought we were going to have initially… last week was really our first test since the start of the year, we were well overdue.”
Practice One of the Coates Hire Ipswich 360 starts at 1.15pm AEST.
