Crazy Race Locks me in for Finals! 🔒

G’day guys,

I’m leaving Tailem Bend with mixed feelings after a pretty crazy weekend for the Mobil 1 Optus Racing garage at the first-ever enduro here and the first round of the Enduro Cup.

The good? I always love the enduros, when there’s so much more on the line. It puts pressure on the whole team to perform and execute the entire weekend, with so many points up for grabs.

It’s always great working with Fabs [Fabian Coulthard] too. It’s awesome having one of the most experienced co-drivers on the grid on our team.

But the bad is that the story for us this weekend was that we just didn’t quite have the pace, especially in the race.

There were definitely points throughout the weekend when we looked like we were pretty good. We made it through to the shootout, and eighth in the final order was decent, though a penalty for getting in Richie Stanaway’s way dropped us to 10th.

Fabs had an awesome start. He was up to eighth on the first lap and found another position before his first stop. I was getting nervous watching him up the pointy end! But he did a fantastic job, even with some damaged bodywork around the right-rear didn’t do much for his straight-line speed.

After having a crack at some repairs, we tried an option strategy, making four stops when pretty much everyone else went for three.

It meant we had to be racy and that the race was pretty hectic. Our car was exiting pit lane near the back of the field and finishing its stints sometimes in the lead.

After my fourth stop I was 15th with 19 laps to go. I had a lot of fun out there recovering to eighth, with a couple of fastest laps thrown into the mix.

But in the end we just didn’t quite have the pace — we were fast enough, but we just didn’t maintain enough.

We split strategies across the team, and we ended up in the same spot and being pretty much just as fast as Woody [Ryan Wood] and Juice [Jayden Ojeda] on the three-stopper. We tried to go as fast as we could, but we didn’t have the tyre life.

You’ve got to finish these enduros, so obviously these are good points, but I’m gutted we didn’t get a result for the team. As a whole team we’ll have to go back to the drawing board little bit for Bathurst and make this new tyre light up a bit more.

There was some other good news, though. We got a good amount of points for the weekend, which means we’re safe for the finals. That means we can have a real crack at Bathurst, which will be really cool.

See you then!

Chaz