Winton: WPS/WOO Racing Friday report

BARGWANNA BUOYED BY SPEED IN WEATHERED WINTON PRACTICE

WPS/WOW Racing has made a productive start to Round 4 of the V8 Supercar Championship Series on a day of changeable weather conditions at Winton Motor Raceway in rural Victoria today.

Jason Bargwanna finished today's practice session with the 22nd fastest time, enjoying a solid day in the #10 WPS Racing Falcon, working through set-ups for the various conditions that were thrown up by the wintry Winton weather today.

Bargwanna was especially pleased with the performance of the car in the wet stages of practice. Bargwanna is noted for his skills in wet conditions and today the #10 WPS Racing Falcon was one of the fastest cars on the circuit during the rainfall that covered the circuit in the mid-stages of the session.

Brazilian Max Wilson ended the day's session in 31st position in the #8 WOW Racing Falcon. With the fluctuating conditions at Winton today, times on the leaderboard had as much to do with the timing of a driver's best lap time in comparison with the weather than the outright pace of their car.

Today's practice session was topped by Paul Dumbrell ahead of Jason Richards and Garth Tander.

WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY --

Jason Bargwanna -- #10 WPS Racing Falcon

"Today's practice session was in three parts really," said Bargwanna.

"The first part was the dry running we had in the first half of practice. Then once the rain started to fall it was fairly wet out there and we had the chance to work on our wet set-up.

"Eventually the circuit started to dry out, so the third part of today was about working on making the car handle on a drying track.

"That's probably the hardest conditions for a driver and engineer to work on because you it's not one way or the other. It's neither completely dry nor really wet and you don't know whether to run slicks or wets and set-up is tricky.

"It's good that we got some time in variable conditions today because the way the forecast is looking we could see all sorts of weather across the weekend.

"We tried a lot of things today and I think we are in a good position for tomorrow. In the dry we were searching for grip but we worked at it and had the car in the front half of the field when the rain came.

"In the last part of the session when the track was dry enough for us to go quicker than our earlier times we tried some things and our last set-up change was probably in the wrong direction, so we didn't improve when others did.

"But that's what practice is all about. We've tried some things and we know what direction to take for tomorrow. We'll now go back to our best set-up and improve on it from there.

"In the wet the car was quite good and if those are the conditions for the rest of the weekend we could really be in the hunt for a good result."

Max Wilson -- #8 WOW Racing Falcon

"We worked a lot on the car today throughout the session," said Wilson.

"There is definitely more to come from us. We didn't have the car as good as we would have liked in the first half of the session so we made some changes.

"When the rain came we turned our attention to wet track time and we were definitely more competitive in the rain.

"We certainly don't like to be so far down the order but the main thing is that we have worked through a lot in terms of set-up and we now know a lot more about what works and what doesn't in both the dry and the wet."

Craig Gore -- Team Owner

"If today is any indication we are in for an interesting weekend at Winton," said Gore.

"Changeable weather conditions always make for interesting strategies. Bargs had a very productive day in practice today and is looking good. He's a noted wet weather driver and he and the team set some solid foundations today for a good weekend.

"Max obviously isn't happy with where he has ended practice but we all know that you don't earn points for practice. The drivers and our engineering team will sit down and compare notes overnight and come out stronger tomorrow."

WPS/WOW RACING -- Team Talk

In Part Two of our first WPS/WOW Racing -- Team Talk column, Car #10 Engineer Daniel Kroehn discusses the engineering challenge of setting up a V8 Supercar for the tight and twisty Winton Motor Raceway.

"If you have a good overall car that usually works well straight out of the truck, you will go well at Winton and run up the front," says Kroehn.

"If you had to choose an end of the car on the engineering spectrum that you really wanted to get working well, it would be the front end at Winton.

"Winton is tight with lots of slow corners, so it's generally known as a chassis circuit. Engine horsepower doesn't generally come into to play too much compared to some of the bigger, faster places we race.

"It's generally a similar set-up to the Adelaide street circuit. There are lots of slow corners around the 90-degree mark. On top of that there are a couple of places that are very slow.

"It's these slow, 180-degree corners that we are focusing on for some extra speed this weekend. They may be slow corners but there is time to be gained in them.

"If you are at the track this weekend or watching the in-car cameras on TV or online, a good indicator the team's tend to use to gauge the pace of other cars is the run into Turn One and Two in front of the pit lane.

"If you hear a car on the rev limiter in fifth gear before the braking zone into Turn One, it means they have had a good run out of the last corner, carried good corner speed, got the power down early and have their car working well.

"If they are on the limiter for a long time in fifth, they are really, really on it."

-credit: wps/wow