Quick chat with V8 Supercar Driver Mark Winterbottom

51 Thoughts was extremely lucky to have a brief chat with Ford Performance Racing star Mark Winterbottom to talk about his season so far and his expectations for Pukehoke this weekend.

1.  What were your expectations for the 2014 season? Did you feel that you could win the championship?

 You come in every year trying to win the championship, but statistics have shown that it hasn’t really gone that way. The same sort of thing applies at Bathurst, I tried for 10 years to win it and eventually I won it. I think we have a good enough team and if we can get it right, we can do the job. You have to be good for 12 months and that’s where we have sort of fallen short in the past but we hope and feel that we can win if we get everything right.

2.  Has the team learnt from past problems?  

 Yeah, you know every time you improve and gain, other people improve and gain so it’s just about how much you can improve on other people I guess. So yeah we are doing a good job this year we have probably struggled for pace this year than previous years.  In saying that we are the best position we have ever been at round 4 of the championship. So we are using our strengths in different areas, and hopefully when we do get our speed back, which at Winton we did have a fair bit of speed again, you can out it too good use and make the right decisions. I think we are doing a good job this year, but you always have to stay on top of your game because if you don’t the next guy jumps on you, so it’s a big turning wheel, it’s quite tough.

3. Do you think the car is tuned better for the race than qualifying?

Yeah at the moment our car is better in the race than it is in qualifying.  Last year and previously it was better in qualifying than the race, so we’ve gone full reversal, not a lot has changed so I’m not sure why that is the case but I think the level of competition is so high now if you get it slightly wrong you can easily be P5, P10 or P15, it’s so tough and I think that is probably the main thing is more competition and when you get it right its ok and when you get it wrong it can look bad.

4.  What are your expectations for Pukehoke this weekend?

We had a real quick car here last weekend, but we kept blowing tyres. I feel like we will have a good car, and there are four opportunities to race. So you’ve got to try and get four good results. It’s my goal to win on Sunday, because it’s one of the most important races and you it is where some of the biggest points in the competition are.

5.  What about tyre reliability? Do drivers worry about the fact that you can lose grip in them and they can explode every so often? Does that play a part in the tyres you use?

Yeah at 260 km/h and the tyre blow outs it’s not pretty, and especially at this track if a tyre blew turn one you could have a monster shunt. I was lucky it blew on the back straight but it’s a concern, you have got to try finish the race and obviously first to win you must finish so we couldn’t do that last year and we have got to work out why and make sure we come up with the right strategy on tyre use, car setup, how you attack the track, what you hit and what you don’t hit and we have sort of done our research so hopefully in a couple of days’ time we will work out it was the right way.