Despite an unfortunate weekend of racing at the NTI Townsville 500 for Dunlop Super2 Series driver Jobe Stewart, the Mount Gambier local has emerged with a positive attitude.
The weekend started on an encouraging note with the Erebus Motorsport driver placing fourth in practice on Friday.
Things took a turn however when the young gun qualified 17th for race one and could only climb two places to finish 15th following a collision on the opening lap at turn three.
“In qualifying, when we put new tyres on at the same time as everyone else, the car just did not really react how it normally would and was not really fast enough,” Stewart said.
“There was a big crash on the first lap which I was involved in which gave me a bit of damage which did not really help, I was a little bit off the pace and just could not move forward.”
While Stewart qualified 15th for race two, he dropped down to 23rd after yet another crash on lap one at the infamous turn three, which left him with a drive through penalty and a heavily damaged front end.
“Going into qualifying two it was just a reset and go again, but it was a similar result and could not quite make up enough time,” Stewart said.
“It was pretty much the same thing, the same corner, turn three on the first lap, everything kind of checked up and I couldn’t really slow down quick enough.
“I got heaps of front end damage so that was a similar result as the first race. On the start I think that (turn three) is one of the tightest corners and that is where it always bunches up.”
The Limestone Coast local said despite the weekend’s results, he learnt a lot and improved the set up on the #99 ZB Commodore.
“Even though it was a bad result, I think we still made some gains with the car and I was still learning heaps over the weekend, so it was still a positive weekend overall,” he said.
“We kind of went back to what we had at Bathurst when we were pretty quick, so that was definitely a positive and with the nature of Townsville with a few hard braking zones, it kind of helped me out there with nailing my braking and stuff like that.
“There are a few other people who came off a lot worse than I did on the weekend – at least the car is still somewhat straight and it is not completely destroyed, so it shouldn’t take too much to get it back going again.
“You’re obviously not going to have the best result every weekend, so it is good to have bad races every now and then as dumb as it sounds to make yourself stronger so you can tolerate the bad races better and just make you hungrier for a good result.”
In preparation for his next race, the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 on September 13-15, Stewart will drive in a test day at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in August.
“We will change the car setup and work on driving and stuff like that just for a bit more practice and hopefully a bit more confidence in between the races,” Stewart said.
“It is always good to do a test day, we haven’t done one in a while, we didn’t one before the Townsville race.
“It will be good to go back and just focus on the car and driving for a day, take away the racing part of it and just focus on ourselves for a bit.
“There is a little bit of time off so then we can still do the test day and still have even more time to think about it and prepare for Sandown.
“All we can do is prepare ourselves as best we can and just hope for the best and then when we get there we’ll see what happens.”
Stewart is currently sitting eighth out of 24 drivers in the Dunlop Super2 Series Championship.
“Perth was not that great and Townsville was even worse, so to still be somewhere in the top 10 is not too bad – we are only halfway through the season so anything can happen,” he said.
