Nulon Racing’s Scott Pye and IRWIN Racing’s Mark Winterbottom are looking to continue their previous form as they look forward to this weekend’s Sandown SuperSprint.
Pye heads to Sandown off the back of an encouraging weekend at The Bend, where he moved forwards ten positions in the final race, and is looking forward to continuing the team’s development at Sandown.
“Sandown is a track that I love and have had good success there in the past, so I’m looking forward to heading back there,” said Pye.
“Having Tyler [Everingham] in the car for his first co-driver session is going to be exciting for him and a good opportunity for us to run him through a program
“Sandown is a place where our cars are quite fast so we have high expectations, high hopes and can’t wait to get on track.”
Winterbottom rates Sandown as one of his favourite circuits, with two wins in the famed Sandown 500 in 2006 and 2015, as well as seven podium finishes at the venue.
“It’s one of my favourite events, I’ve had really good success there in the past,” said Winterbottom.
“It will be really cool to have Michael Caruso in the car doing some laps in the co-drivers session on Friday.
“Weather is going to be the big factor for the weekend, Thursday is looking to have a lot of rain and we’ve seen in the past what it does to track conditions, but we were really quick last year and it felt like a missed opportunity, so we’ll try and get a good result for our local round.”
Sandown Raceway is affectionately known as ‘The Home of Horsepower’ with a traditional layout featuring two long straights split by a sequence of slow corners and chicanes. While Winton Motor Raceway is the team’s official test track, the Sandown circuit is located in the heart of South-East Melbourne marks the team’s home event being only eight kilometres away from the team’s Mount Waverley headquarters.
The Penrite Sandown SuperSprint features a three-day format, with cars first hitting the track for Practice 1 on Friday 1:10pm local time.
Friday will also host the only additional drivers session for the year in preparation for the Bathurst 1000 in October. Michael Caruso will return to the seat of Winterbottom’s IRWIN Racing Team 18 Supercar, while the recently-signed Tyler Everingham will have his first drive of Pye’s #20 Nulon Racing Team 18 Supercar while also racing in the Super2 Series over the weekend.
All three races will be staged over 36 laps on the Dunlop Super Soft Tyre, with Race 24 of the championship held on Saturday, and Races 25 and 26 hold on Sunday afternoon.
The three-part knockout qualifying format returns for Saturday, with each part lasting 10 minutes each. Two back-to-back all-in 10-minute sessions will set the grid for Races 25 and 26 respectively.
All the action can be viewed live on Fox Sports and Kayo, with post-race highlights shown on free-to-air channel 7Mate.