Qualifying set-up was the priority this weekend and with two top-five starting positions at Townsville Jason Bright seems to have come a long way in the Trading Post Racing Commodore.

Brighty was threatening for a podium right until the last few laps of today’s race but, with the chequered flag in sight, disaster struck as the engine temperatures soared.

The car limped home in 18th but Brighty is looking to the positives, saying  the lessons learnt at this track will be invaluable for the planned test before the next race meeting at Phillip Island on September 10.

Jason Bright
Trading Post Racing
“I stuffed up early on and locked the rears letting Will Davison through. I felt as though we had more pace than him but couldn’t afford to lose a position so we pitted early and showed how much pace we had by putting in some of the fastest laps of the race and popping out fourth in front of those guys. That put us in pretty good shape in terms of track position and I felt we definitely had potential for the podium.

“I think we’ve had better race pace potential at other rounds. At Winton we certainly did but didn’t qualify as well. We’ve certainly taken a step forward in qualifying speed here but this surface is very different to any other we go to and it definitely showed up a lot of things and gives us a lot of new directions to test.

“You’ve got to go to a lot of circuits before you learn a car really well. The surface at Townsville was probably the last type we needed to try. We’ve shown we have a good low-grip and good high-grip set-ups so hopefully we can learn a lot at our test.”

Brad Jones
Team Co-Owner
“I thought car 14 had a great race. They were in and about the top six the whole race thanks to good strategy so to have it break two laps from the end, I’m absolutely gutted”

Jason Bright V8 STATS
Current championship position:  19
Current championship points:  845
V8 Supercar Championship race starts: 344
Previous best Townsville qualifying: 4 (2010)
Previous best Townsville result: 16 (2009)

Sucrogen Townsville 400-V8 Supercar Championship
TOWNSVILLE STREET CIRCUIT
Races 16 Qualifying
01 Jamie Whincup, 888, 1:12.7275*
02 Craig Lowndes, 888, +0.2820
03 Garth Tander, HRT, +0.3727
04 James Courtney, DJR, +0.3986
05 Jason Bright, Trading Post Racing, +0.4332
06 Mark Winterbottom, FPR, +0.5499
07 Will Davison, HRT, +.5603
08 Jason Richards, Team BOC, +0.5939
09 Steven Johnson, DJR, +0.6160
10 Steven Richards, FPR, +0.6165

Sucrogen Townsville 400-V8 Supercar Championship
TOWNSVILLE STREET CIRCUIT
Races 16
01 Mark Winterbottom, FPR
02 James Courtney, DJR
03 Garth Tander, HRT
04 Paul Dumbrell, RNR
05 Steve Richards, FPR
06 Will Davison, HRT
07 Shane Van Gisbergen, SBR
08 Jason Richards, Team BOC
09 Jonathan Webb, SBR
10 Jason Bargwanna, Kelly Racing
18 Jason Bright, Trading Post Racing