Top Percat priority: no car carnage
NICK Percat admits avoiding the concrete canyon carnage will be a priority for his Brad Jones Racing team’s fleet of Holdens on the Gold Coast after a horror season to date.
The three-car squad’s nightmare year has been littered with several huge crashes that have kept their crew flat out rebuilding wreckages.
Among those costly prangs have been Nick Percat’s highspeed brake failure at the Australian Grand Prix that sent him barrelling into Lee Holdsworth; Todd Hazelwood’s frightening airborne shunt at Sandown; and Tim Slade’s crunching impact with a Bathurst wall.
All three entries were also damaged in a 12-car pile-up in Tasmania earlier in the year.
Ahead of next weekend’s visit to the Surfers Paradise track lined by bruising barriers, Percat was disbelieving of how 2017 has panned out.
“Seriously, you wouldn’t read about the year we have had … it’s like never-ending,” he said.
“It just shows how strong the bond is at BJR that they keep coming out fighting, keep putting cars together, keep putting them on track, keep giving us a shot at having a good result.
“So for me, personally as a driver I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“The morale is still very high and they know that the moment it does turn we’re going to have race wins and good results.”
Nonetheless, he said the punishing nature of the Gold Coast 600 circuit will be front and centre of the mind for each of BJR’s drivers.
“It is a car-wrecker, 100 per cent,” Percat said of the infamous street race.
“So for us … I would imagine between all of the drivers it is in the back of your mind that we have had a year of a lot of damage.
“You just want a solid result and minimum workload for the boys turning the cars around for New Zealand (a fortnight later).”
Percat was in podium contention deep into the race at Bathurst last weekend until a lock-up and then a last-lap crash prevented him from making it to the finish.
Tim Blanchard’s car was left battered and bruised after a serious prang in Launceston.
As a result, the talented 29year-old has dropped to 21st in the championship – below where he finished last year at minnows Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport (18th).
In the meantime, Percat will return to go-karts this weekend to contest the Race of Stars event at Pimpama.
There he will go wheel-towheel with Europe’s finest karters including current world champion Paolo De Conto and fellow Italian superstar Davide Fore.
“For probably karters that are my age … he (Fore) was probably their karting hero growing up,” Percat said.
“I know for me I had posters on my wall of him when he was at Tony Kart back in the day so it is pretty cool to be sitting on the grid alongside him.”
Percat is hopeful of flying the Australian flag in taking the fight to the international contingent come the final tomorrow.
He believes the circuit’s unusually fast nature will hand him some sort of advantage.
“I might not be able to beat them because obviously it is their job to race a go-kart but I’d like to hang on and see how I go,” he said.
The 15-lap KZ2 class final will start at 2.42pm tomorrow.