Truck Assist Racing heads to Sydney Motorsport Park this weekend for the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight.
Round 7 of the Repco Supercars Championship features a Saturday night race, a first for the new-for-2023 Gen3 cars.
It’s a venue that both Matt Stone Racing drivers, Jack Le Brocq and Cameron Hill, have run strongly at over the years.
Supercars teams also tested at SMP in February prior to the season getting underway.
Le Brocq won his maiden Supercars race at SMP in 2020, having added to that tally in Darwin last month.
On the #35 side of the garage, Canberra-based Hill acknowledges Sydney as his ‘home’ round, with a strong contingent of partners set to attend.
The 26-year-old is vastly experienced at Eastern Creek during his climb up the Australian motorsport ladder.
Having adorned the beautiful Indigenous Livery – inspired by Rhonda Sampson’s artwork – in Darwin and Townsville, both MSR Chevrolet Camaro Supercars return to the full-season livery for Sydney.
Track action at SMP kicks off on Saturday with a pair of half-hour practice sessions leading into elimination qualifying
Race 18 that night will take place under the lights with 200km of racing and refuelling stops.
Sunday will see a single 15-minute qualifying session to set the grid for Race 19 (140km) that afternoon.
QUOTEBOARD:
Jack Le Brocq – Driver of #34:
“First Gen3 night race this weekend and it’s going to be pretty cool. These cars are a little bit difficult to see out of, even in the daylight, so throw the night time in there and it’s going to be pretty interesting. I think it’s going to be awesome as a whole. I love SMP; there’s a few new sections in there in terms of surfacing since we raced there last year. These cars are extremely high degradation so it’s going to be interesting around SMP because it’s high deg at the best of times. It’s a very interesting format as well, but fingers crossed we nail it and have a good run. We’ve had a great experience at SMP before, had a win there a few years back so hopefully we can notch up another one with MSR. Anything is possible – we’re coming off a great run at the moment, awesome speed, so fingers crossed we can kept it going.”
Cameron Hill – Driver of #35:
“I have a lot of people coming up to watch me this week as it is essentially my home round being closest to Canberra, which will be great. The only night race of the year, it will be spectacular and the Truck Assist Racing Chevrolet Camaros will look good under lights. I raced at the return of night racing at Sydney Motorsport Park back in 2018 when the light was still temporary and it was harder to see then, but it’s certainly not like that now. Although we didn’t get the results we wanted in Townsville, it was still a real positive weekend. Saturday was tough with a bad qualifying position, which made the race a long one. Qualifying stronger was the focus on Sunday and we did that. I managed the tyres a lot better as well and we were running at the front thanks to a safety car. The race pace was really strong and I was really happy after Sunday, all we need now is just that little more in qualifying to give us a boost at the beginning of the races. It’s the closest thing I have to a home track, whether that translates to an advantage or not I’m not actually sure as everyone in Supercars is at a very high level and have raced at Sydney Motorsport Park more than me. It is a track I’m familiar with, so we can focus on the little details to improve one lap pace, there’s every chance we can have a solid weekend.”
