Jason Bright 2015 Bathurst Preview

51 Thoughts had the opportunity to catch up with Jason Bright to discuss how he felt he would go at Bathurst this year.

Jason Bright and Brad Jones Racing came into season 2015 feeling like they could contend for this year’s championship. They made some changes which they felt would help them win the championship. These included a change of engineers, the way the team would be run and they also a new aero-dynamic package (all the manufactures faced the same change).

However he felt that he had a difficult start to the 2015 V8 Supercar championship where he had a lot of races where he finished outside the top 15. The team were at a loss to understand what was going on and why Jason wasn’t in contention to win races or making the top ten. He felt that getting the right car setup and getting the car looking after its tyres where things that affected his results early in the year. “I think that when you haven’t got the balance right, tyre life goes out the window. When we didn’t have a very good balance we were probably one of the worst cars in the field for tyre life.” After a while the team decided to make some changes, including getting a good balance throughout the car and the results showed as he finished third in race three at Eastern Creek.

Heading into this year’s Bathurst Jason feels like he has a good chance to win the great race this year as long as they can hit the ground running with a fast car and avoid the trouble that can happen at the mountain. “To be honest I feel like going to Bathurst, we will have a pretty strong car there if last year is anything to go by. We had good speed there; it’s a bumper circuit that has suited us a bit, its fast and high grip.”

As a past champion at Bathurst (in 1998 where in won with Steven Richards in a Stone Brothers Racing Ford Falcon EF) he knows that you have to be ready for what everything the mountain can offer. “So, more and more thought goes into strategy, in the past you just had to try and concentrate on being there for the last stint and now you have to be there for every stint.”

Jason looks forward to the rest of the year and hopes to finish the year strong. “If Bathurst suits us then I think Phillip Island and New Zealand will suit us, which will be good. Homebush is a very different circuit compared to Bathurst, Phillip Island and New Zealand for sure but it’s a track that has worked well for me as well.”