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Jack Le Brocq was left with mixed emotions after his second-place finish in the opening race at the Repco The Bend SuperSprint.
While he declared himself excited about second place immediately after the finish, he also admitted to being frustrated that a possible victory had slipped away.
The only thing that was clear was the key lesson from their battle for the lead late in the race: don’t try to overtake on the outside.
On lap 18, Le Brocq had made an inside pass to leader Shane van Gisbergen at Turn 17, but tried to hold out on the next turn when the Kiwi completed a crossover.
That allowed Fabian Coulthard to downgrade the Supercheap Auto Mustang to third.
On lap 22, Le Brocq was back in second place and challenging Van Gisbergen, but by opting for the outside at Turn 17, Le Brocq again ran dry and came back in third.
In a radio communication captured by the television broadcast, his engineer Brad Wischusen, generally cool and calm, later yelled, “Jack, not the fellow outside, come on!”
Le Brocq followed Coulthard inside van Gisbergen into Turn 1 of the next lap, before following the Shell Mustang driver to the checkered flag.
When asked at the post-race press conference about the heated radio call, Le Brocq said: “It was a lot of fun, I hadn’t actually heard it explode before!
“I was a bit surprised, but no, everything is fine. I think it was deserved. “
When pressed further on the lessons of running in front of the main playing field, Le Brocq added: “The most important is just not going outside.
“I did it twice in a row, you think I would have learned from the first one, but I’m obviously a slow learner!”
Second place at The Bend was added to Le Brocq’s victory at Sydney Motorsport Park in July, a result that came on a mixed-tire weekend where strategy played an important role.
Today, Le Brocq’s trump card was not tire allocation, but tire life – the Supercheap entry takes care of your left rear much better than van Gisbergen’s Commodore.
After dropping down to ninth place at the end, van Gisbergen said he realized fairly quickly that he had tire problems.
“I could feel early in the race that the tires weren’t that good, so I tried to drive as slow as possible in the second run,” he said.
“The tires got worse and worse and finally disappeared. It was a pretty good battle there in the end, I did my best to keep everyone away, but it wasn’t.
“I guess for tomorrow, we will keep the qualifying car pretty similar, and in the race, we will do what we can to make the tires last as long as possible.”
