Bright Pays Tribute To Brilliant Team Effort
10/5/2004 0:43 (Press Release) -
Jason Bright paid glowing tribute to his PWR Racing teammates after winning Round 3 of the V8 Supercar Championship Series in New Zealand on the weekend, his first round victory since winning at Barbagallo in mid-2002.
With a strong showing vital to keeping his championship hopes alive, Bright was the dominant driver of the weekend by topping time sheets in the second practice session and qualifying, before finishing second in Race 1 and winning Races 2 and 3.
Teammate Paul Weel further demonstrated the depth of the team by fighting back from qualifying in 14th position to finish 11th, 6th and 6th in the three races to be placed 8th for the round.
Bright was quick to name his team as the greatest single factor behind his win. “The guys did a fantastic job on the car all weekend, from the word go we were on the money,” he said.
“The car was strong in both sets of conditions (wet and dry) after we struggled in the wet at Eastern Creek, and we’re back on the sort of form we had at the Grand Prix.”
He said the genesis of the team’s success with its new VY Commodores lay in the team’s difficulties with the outdated VX Commodore last year.
“We were a year behind everyone else getting into the VY Commodore and we had to work pretty hard last year to make the VX viable. From the minute we put the VY on to the track it all started to makes sense.
“We’re pretty happy with the improvements we’ve made in the wet since Eastern Creek, full credit to the guys. We’ve finally made some sense of the average results we’ve had in the last two rounds.”
The round, held at New Zealand’s Pukekohe Park Raceway, proved a difficult one for both organisers and race engineers as persistent rain washed out any hopes of a first race on Saturday. The three races were rescheduled for Sunday, each of 100km with the planned compulsory tyre change dropped.
It was the PWR Racing team which best made sense of the changeable conditions, finding workable set-ups for Bright’s #50 car and Weel’s #16 in both wet and dry conditions.
For Weel, the weekend’s good results could not hide a missed opportunity after failing to reach the coveted “shootout” for the Top 10 grid positions. Weel qualified 14th, with his best time an agonising 1/10th of a second outside a Top 10 Shootout berth.
“It’s the first and most obvious place to improve, is our qualifying,” he said. “This weekend we proved we have the speed and ability to match it with anyone else out there, we just need to start form further up the field than we have been.
“But having a good car and full confidence in my team is a great start, and we’re beginning to translate that into results.”
Bright now sits in fifth position in the V8 Supercar Championship driver standings on 457 points, behind Marcos Ambrose (532), Steven Richards (528), Greg Murphy (509) and Rick Murphy (502). Weel is 8th with 347 points.
Round 4 of the series will be held at Darwin’s Hidden Valley Raceway from May 21-23.
Release Date: 04/05/2004
PWR Racing
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