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 Supercars Championship.
Starting in Darwin for Supercars last month, Evans then took part in the 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 according to plan for Evans. Contact at Turn 3, amidst chaos in front, led to a spin and damage that required an early stop for repair.
Although he scored 22nd, the Kiwi recorded the second-fastest lap of the race and gained plenty of experience in tyre degradation, which will prove crucial in the second half of the season.
He 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.
“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 offline.
“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.
“I’m not disappointed,” he added. “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.”
Evans now returns to his Gold Coast home for a well-deserved break ahead of the Sydney SuperNight on July 19-21.
“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,” he said.
Header Image: Race Project (Supplied)
