Promising signs for Jaxon Evans in Tasmania debut

Jaxon Evans has left the Ned Whiskey Tasmania Supersprint with plenty of positives despite enduring a tough weekend of results during his debut outing at Symmons Plains Raceway.

The New Zealander’s first appearance on the Apple Isle saw him end the weekend by being taken out during Sunday’s outing midway through the race.

While results were less than ideal for the Repco Supercars Championship rookie, Evans’ general pace in all practice and qualifying sessions, along with the overall performance of the whole Brad Jones Racing stable across the weekend, there were major signs of improvement.

Starting off with 21st in Friday’s sole practice session, Evans improved to 19th in Saturday morning’s wet practice session before Qualifying in the same position after making it through to Q2.

A decent showing in the opening race of the weekend with multiple promising moments was marred by a 15-second penalty which demoted Evans to the back of the field.

Not to be deterred, Evans then produced one of his most impressive sessions for the year, putting the #12 SCT Logistics Chevrolet Camaro in ninth during Sunday morning’s sole practice session.

Evans’ pace was on show once again during Sunday’s qualifying session by progressing to Q2, but an error during his final flying lap prevented him from sneaking into Q3 -– the rookie eventually settled for P18.

In the race itself, Evans had shown promising signs and made a couple of impressive overtakes before being taken out by a rival on the front straight – the contact sending Evans into the barrier and out of the race with significant damage to the car.

“Obviously our first visit to Tassie was always going to be difficult as it’s a short, tight and difficult track,” Evans said.

“The margins were always going to be really tight here in Supercars land, so I knew we were up against it, but I was really happy with the progress we made to be honest.

“Sunday’s performance in qualifying was really strong, but in the end, it actually came down to a driving error in Q2, which unfortunately cost us a spot in the top 10.

“I feel like internally there is light at the end of the tunnel that we can see as a group, but we just need to execute well as the season comes to an end,

“It’s also been a good weekend for Brad Jones Racing as a whole. I think the performance gained for all of us from Saturday to Sunday is a credit to the engineers, and this philosophy that we’re trying to follow is heading in the right direction.

“The results are starting to come, Bryce (Fullwood) ended up in the top five and Andre (Heimgartner) also moved forward from his qualifying position, so I think it’s promising to see.

“But more importantly, personally I’m getting closer to them as well. So if they’re at the front and I’m close to them, then hopefully I’m going to be somewhere up there soon.”

Following on from this weekend, it’s back-to-back events for Evans, who will link up with Arise Racing at the inaugural GT Festival at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

Evans will be behind the wheel of the Ferrari 296 GT3 with Elliot Schutte for fourth round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS season at Phillip Island on August 23-25.

“Looking forward to next weekend, I love GT Racing and I love going racing with the Arise guys and the Ferrari 296 is awesome to drive. Last time out at Phillip Island, we were pretty successful, and while it doesn’t mean that we’ll go there and repeat the same performances, it gives us a bit of confidence in our step.

“I think Elliott’s definitely a more well-rounded driver from where we were during the first round of the season. So as a group, everything’s starting to click, Elliot’s running on song, the team has learnt more about the car and we feel like we’re in with a good shot.”