Capping off a whirlwind four weeks on the road at the NTI Townsville 500, Jaxon Evans has identified a key area to improve upon at the halfway mark of his debut season in the Repco Supercars Championship.
Starting in Darwin for Supercars last month, Evans then took part in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia event at Mt Fuji and the world’s biggest GT event, the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa as part of his continuing factory role with Porsche at Phantom Global Racing.
Arriving in Townsville for his first-ever event at the Reid Park Street Circuit, Evans was on the pace in Saturday qualifying, setting the 15th fastest time in the SCT Motorsport Camaro ZL1 – just 0.332s off pole and 0.152 from a berth in the Top 10 Shootout.
Saturday’s race didn’t go to plan for Evans after contact at Turn 3 amidst chaos in front led to a spin and damage requiring an early stop to repair.
Although he scored 22nd, Evans did record the second fastest lap of the race and gained plenty of experience in tyre degradation, which will prove crucial entering the second half of the season.
Evans then qualified 22nd for the Sunday event, but made solid progress early by keeping it clean as he continued to learn the effects of the Gen3 Supercar on a high degradation circuit on long runs.
Evans now returns to his Gold Coast home for a well deserved break ahead of the Panasonic Air Conditioning Sydney SuperNight on July 19-21.
QUOTES
Jaxon Evans
#12 SCT Motorsport, Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
On the Townsville weekend
“It was a pretty tough weekend in general,” Evans reflected.
“On Saturday it felt like our qualifying pace wasn’t too bad, the field was pretty tight and it wasn’t a clean lap by myself, but I started 15th with only a couple of tenths to the front.
“I was pretty happy with that, but I got turned around on lap 1 and I had damage, which forced me to come in to fix it.
“I got back out and felt like I learnt a bit, but at the same time it was hard trying to keep out of everyone’s way driving through the pick up off line. I learnt pretty quickly in Sunday’s race that tyre degradation is big in Townsville and there’s a certain way to drive these cars to look after it, which I haven’t quite perfected yet.
“I don’t feel like the car was too far away, it was just maybe overdriving in the first part of the stint, which hurt me, but in the end we’ll do some research and dig into the data so I can prepare a little better for Sydney.
“Hopefully there, we can look after the tyre life and have a bit more speed.”
On finishing his four weekends of racing
“I’m not disappointed. Obviously, it’s a frustrating result and I don’t feel fatigue or anything like that has set in, but it’s always nice to finish on a high, so to be two races outside the top 15 isn’t ideal.
“It’s all learning and I felt like a rookie this weekend, but it’s no excuse, so we’ll do some work before the next round.
“I think I need to study how the cars operate as Sydney is another high deg circuit, but the Brad Jones Racing guys had a good run there last year providing me with the video and data I can view alongside my engineer Julian to try to speed up the learning process.”