Bright Wins His Second Round For 2004
15/6/2004 11:49 (Press Release) -
Jason Bright has become the first driver in the 2004 V8 Supercar Championship Series to win two rounds, comprehensively towelling the field to win two of three 150km races run at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway and strengthen his championship position.
His teammate, Paul Weel, further underlined the strength of the PWR Racing team by overcoming an unlucky qualifying effort when rain saw him stranded in 30th position. He made up 20 places in the first race, held station in the second race and improved to 5th by the weekend’s end. He moves to 10th placing in overall championship standings.
Bright, after topping the time sheets in qualifying early in the weekend, carried good form and plenty of outright car speed into the first race which he was unfortunate not to win, held at bay by Mark Skaife who was driving an obviously slower car.
Bright was not to be denied, however, and despite being blocked in his pit bay early in Race 2 during a compulsory tyre stop and losing several track positions, Bright fought back to win the race ahead of Kmart Racing pair Rick Kelly and Greg Murphy.
Needing only to finish third or better in the final race to clinch the round, Bright set his sights even higher and led the race until the early round of pitstops, when he was again shuffled backwards by pit lane congestion. Forced to pass Kelly and Marcos Ambrose to regain the lead, Bright set about establishing an eight-second buffer, in the process setting a new race lap record.
“We had a couple of problems early in the weekend as we were trying a few things with our braking package, but as the weekend went on we got better and better and in the races we had a car that was probably quick in all the wrong places. It was great under brakes but getting the power down out of corners was a bit of a worry,” he said.
“Full credit to the guys, though, we made the right changes and had a pretty comfortable car to race with.”
The result means Bright retains fifth place in the V8 Supercars championship standings, but the gap between he and series leader Marcos Ambrose – who assumed the lead when Steven Richards was pushed off the track in Race 1 – has been reduced to just 90 points. He trails fourth-placed Greg Murphy by just 28 points.
“There’s a long way to go, definitely, and we’re still in it, the championship last year when we led at this stage but faded right away showed that.”
Weel was equally upbeat. “We can certainly take a fair bit out of this weekend,” he said. “We know we made a mistake in qualifying and we had to live with that, but we’ve probably done a pretty good job since then. I had a spin in Race 2 that was no one’s fault but my own, and I’m disappointed about that, but for the rest of the time we had a superb race car that was highly competitive in any environment.”
The next round of the championship is at Brisbane’s Queensland Raceway from July 2-4.
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