BJR drivers charge forward in thrilling Friday Supercars race at Australian Grand Prix

Brad Jones Racing drivers Andre Heimgartner and Cam Hill produced strong drives during Friday evening’s 19-lap Supercars race at Albert Park Circuit, part of the Australian Grand Prix.

Starting from 16th on the grid, Heimgartner charged through the field in the R&J Batteries GR Supra to secure a top-ten finish, showcasing the car’s race pace around the Albert Park street circuit.

Hill also looked set to deliver a top-ten result in the Dare Racing GR Supra after a series of impressive overtakes through the middle stages of the race.

However, late contact with Will Brown dropped him back a handful of positions, leaving him to take the chequered flag in 11th place despite a strong showing throughout the race.

It was an unfortunate end to what had been a promising drive, with Hill demonstrating competitive pace and racecraft as he worked his way forward through the field.

Team-mate Macauley Jones endured a difficult race after being caught in contact on the opening lap, which spun the #96 AlphaTheta GR Supra around and left him facing the wrong direction.

Further contact later in the race forced Jones off the circuit and resulted in additional damage to the car.

Despite the setbacks, the GR Supra package has shown encouraging speed across the weekend.

Fellow Toyota outfit Walkinsahw also secured the first Supercars podium result for the Toyota program during Friday’s action.

Brad Jones Racing would like to congratulate the homologation team and everyone involved in the Toyota project on the milestone achievement.

Attention now turns to Saturday, where the BJR team will reset for another round of qualifying ahead of the third race of the weekend, scheduled for 5:35pm AEDT.

QUOTEBOARD

SUPERCARS

Andre Heimgartner, #8 R&J Batteries Toyota GR Supra

“Friday done here. Pretty cool day. I was starting 16th because of the qualifying yesterday but Phil [Keed, Race Engineer] and the guys did a good job with the car, and we tried it a bit of a different direction. It wasn't perfect, but any day you can go from 16th to 9th is really good. The seas sort of parted out there and few people had delaminating tires, but overall, really happy with the direction and some little gains that we had. Even though it's not perfect I feel like we're making little gains here and there which is cool and another top 10 is good.”

Cameron Hill, #14 Dare Racing Toyota GR Supra

“A lot of waiting before our race this afternoon at 5:30pm but sort of felt like we were going to be a bit better. We learnt a lot in the race yesterday and the car felt pretty racey. There was a lot of action out there, just tried to keep my nose clean. We ended up 11th in the end. The positive is the car felt a lot more competitive today than yesterday. Hopefully we can make some more positive steps tomorrow.”

Macauley Jones, #96 AlphaTheta Racing Toyota GR Supra

“It was a long day with obviously not much going on. I got turned around in lap one which was frustrating after a pretty decent start. I felt a bit like a dodgem car out there so that was also frustrating. I feel like we made improvements in the car today but didn't really get to see it so onto tomorrow.”