As the sun rose on Sunday the 21st of June over Darwin, the Jim Beam Racing Team began Pit Stop Practice with a renewed hope for the day to come. Saturday was forgettable, although the education that came from the day for the team enabled everyone in the garage to appreciate the data we had for Sunday. The information was to become all important to the result for the Day. The Team were on edge but ready to redeem themselves for the mistakes and wretched luck that had followed them across the previous days.

Qualifying began well for both cars – the 20 minute scramble was always going to be a mess in Darwin, and this particular session was no different. With the format lending itself to what could only be called the ‘all in brawl’ of V8 Supercars racing, incidents were sure to be at the front of the racing.

Steve Johnson began strongly, moving his way through the crowd of middle dwelling names to record a time good enough to put him into 8th position in no time...............until what was later discovered to be a broken front sway bar forced the #17 to struggle through the circuit to start the day in P22. A lot of ground would need to be made up, but Junior had the resources behind him, with a fresh set of sprint tyres taunting the team from the garage. It was not impossible to leave the rest of the field in your dust as long as you formulated a strategy that would give you the best out of the soft speed weapon.

Courtney fared much better with the battle enduring for the complete 20 minutes. The leader board changed over 14 times within 6 minutes, with 7 separate drivers all sitting in the P1 position at some stage. It would be tough to call, and James fought and wrestled with the FG to bring home a P8 for the Team. Starting on 20 laps worth of sprint tyre degradation would not make the going easy for James, who knew that the longer race in the scorching sun was about to test the entire field in the championship.

Jim Beam Racing lined up on the grid certain that the strategies that had been confirmed, discussed and put in place were the best possible line to take for the hours of racing ahead. With the two cars starting on different tyres and from very different places within the field, anything was about to happen, and did, right from the start.

Courtney got a great start off the line and managed to fly through 3 cars from the start line placing him comfortable within P5 after only 2 corners. Now it was about bedding in for double digit laps. But once again, a shunt from behind that blindsided the #18, sent the car into a spin a ballerina would have been proud of, and the traffic in the rear went blazing past Courtney as he tried to recover. All the action happened at the rear of the field and went largely unnoticed by TV cameras and the commentary team. Whilst the team shook its head wondering where the luck had gone, Courtney steadied himself and went back to business of racing with a far more arduous situation face. Going from P8 on the grid to P22 in the field, after only 3 laps, made the Courtney’s job seemingly impossible.

The two Jim Beam Racing FG’s then calmed themselves into the job of making it straight around the circuit and staying away from what was expected to be a messy and long day of argy bargy. The two racers managed to stick to their original strategies and race to gain valuable points for the team.

When the Team decided to bring Junior into the pits early for the soft compound tyres, the result was almost immediate with the #17 pushing his way through half of the field to go from P22 through to P13. All Steve had to do was stay out of the mess and keep the car in contention through the middle. James also had a fight in front of him, but without the benefit of the Soft Compound super weapon. It was going to be a hard fight, but a determined Courtney pulled the vehicle into 12th position.

Both drivers did well to concentrate through ambient temps in the cabin of 58 degrees and upwards, along with outside pressure from the field across the racing period. Junior managed to use 2000 Calories worth of energy through the racing on Sunday, which gives us mere mortals an idea of the extreme conditions that Darwin supplied for the Triple Crown races.

“We were fighting out there”, explained Johnson, “from bad qualifying through to the heat and the paint swapping, it was a really tough day”. “Absolutely”, added Courtney “a tough day at the office for both of us. But to look on the bright side we were both in P22 at some stage in today’s race, so for both of us to make it to finish in 12th and 13th position speaks volumes for the cars. We both have the pace, now we just need to pull it all together. We’ve proven we have the weapons to fight”.

“Yeah it was the weekend of hard knocks”, explains team Sporting director Adrian Burgess, “but these cars are still new so whilst we have an awful lot of information on them, we have now added to that information arsenal with some unusual occurrences across the weekend.  That’s a bonus for us. The data will tell us how to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It was still a great weekend,  Darwin always puts on a really good show.”

Jim Beam Racing will now head back to DJR HQ in Queensland to prepare for what promises to be an exciting new Street race in tropical Townsville.
For further comment or interview availability please contact:

Rachael Poeppmann
Brand and Communications Manager
Jim Beam Racing
Phone: +61 7 3287 0113
Mobile: 0423 360 372
Email: rachaelp@djr.com.au