Braking challenge for Jesus Racing
Andrew “Fishtail” Fisher and the team were expecting great things from their front-end setup changes this weekend.
The day got off to a challenging start in P1 with the car not behaving how Fishtail expected with massive overheating problems in the front brakes and an imbalance front to rear. The team finished down in 16th.
With a tight turn around the team got to work and discovered the brake master cylinder wasn’t working properly and the ride height at the rear had moved because of the extra 27KG the Fords have been forced to carry this weekend. A quick trip to the local Repco store was needed to source a new master cylinder.
The team got this back and installed just in time to get the car on the ground to roll out for practice session 2.
There was an immediate improvement in lap times putting Fishtail up around the front running Fords however the car still had an imbalance issue through the fast sections at the back end of the track. After a stop in the pits to check pressures Fishtail reported the brake pedal was vague then locked the front right going into turn one, flat spotting the tyre, which all but ended the session.
After the session the team found a broken front sway bar link which most likely happened in the first practice session as well as some movement in the brake master cylinder mounting point. Both of these issues would have contributed to the lack of feeling from within the car.
The Jesus Racing Ford Falcon ended up in position 13 for P2 in a session that saw the top 6 spots filled by Holden’s with the first Ford being 1 second off the pace!.
The team will fix the issues with the brakes and the sway bar in the hope to find some more speed for qualifying tomorrow morning.
Both qualifying and race 1 will be shown live on Fox Sports with race 1 also being shown live on Channel 10 at 1:50pm.
