Today at Queensland Raceway, Fabian Coulthard had the chance to sample his brand new Ford Falcon FG X for 60 kilometres.
A team is permitted a shakedown when preparing a brand new chassis to race, which means DJR Team Penske’s newest recruit was allowed a quick insight ahead of the team’s test day next week.
The Kiwi racer – who won a race on Saturday at the Clipsal 500 last year – wasn’t giving too much away after his run today but had only good things to say about the new car and team.
He lines up alongside teammate Scott Pye – who saw gradual improvement with the DJR Team Penske V8 Supercar last year – in 2016.
“It’s all pretty good, it’s very positive – you never know what to expect jumping from car to car,” Coulthard told v8supercars.com.au.
“Over Christmas I thought a lot about it and the only thing I had to draw from was Scott’s performance at the end of last year.
“So from my first taste, it’s nice to know what you’re racing against … and I’m pretty positive.”
It was difficult to draw comparisons to his Holden Commodore VF, but the shakedown was more about ensuring he was comfortable in the car and it was mechanically sound.
“The tyre quality we got dished out is pretty poor, so it’s very hard to benchmark one against the other,” he said.
“For me, it’s all about getting comfortable – we have a test day later on in the month, so it is good preparation for me to get comfortable in the car and find out what’s not good, what is good and then work from that.”
While Coulthard is working with a new team, his engineer Phil Keed has shifted with him to DJR Team Penske, continuing a three season relationship that has garnered five race wins and six ARMOR ALL Pole Positions in championship races.
“I guess Phil and I need to understand how the car performs and what it likes – what certain things do to turn the car on, or to detune it.
“It’s always hard, philosophies from team to team don’t always correlate. I know from the short term, what these guys at DJR Team Penske do versus what we used to do at BJR. Some things are the same, some things are different, so we need to see if we can adapt some things and bring them here and then we need to work out what these guys have done in the past and try that as well.
“So we’ve got two philosophies – we need to go down both avenues.”
With a firm focus on podiums this season, DJR Team Penske was on the rise during the second half of 2015, when Coulthard and BJR’s performance started to drop away.
That progress is promising for the Kiwi, who is open about adapting to the Penske way of life.
“I think it’s going to be good – there’s obviously a certain way of thinking within the team already and I feel like it’s important that we don’t come in and overrule what they’ve done and how they’ve approached things.
“From the start of [last] year to the end of the year, it’s been very promising.
“They got their first podium at New Zealand and there’s a lot of potential within the current car that they have – so I think we’ll adapt, both of us, and we’ll get a common goal which is podiums and race wins.”
During the off-season, Coulthard has shifted to Queensland to live near his team and with that comes a change of home test track.
“It’s a long time since I’ve tested here,” he said of Queensland Raceway.
“It would’ve been back in 2009 when it was my test track, so it’s going to be different.
“The ambient [temperature] here is a lot hotter than it is at Winton. Winton can be hot in summer bur freezing cold in winter, so we’ll be able to get used to that in a sense. I think the hotter rounds will become a little bit easier driver-wise because this is the norm … we’re just going to take each day as it comes.
“Obviously the test day is important, we only have a limited amount of them, so we have to maximise them.”
