Sydney learnings key to Jaxon Evans’ Supercars learnings

Jaxon Evans has had another crucial learning weekend in the Repco Supercars Championship with plenty of positives to come out of the 2024 Panasonic Air Conditioning Sydney SuperNight.

Although unable to close in on the top 10, the first-year Supercars driver finished both races higher than where he qualified, picking up an 18th on Saturday and 20th on Sunday.

Starting off with a challenging practice session on Friday afternoon, Evans was able to find some more pace in Saturday’s qualifying, and put the SCT Motorsport Chevrolet Camaro in P22.

The New Zealander then showcased his fighting spirit, overcoming physical pain on Saturday night to enjoy an impressive run under the spectacular lights of Sydney Motorsport Park and gaining four positions throughout the 51-lap outing.

Sunday proved a similar story for Evans as he qualified in P23 but once again managed to make up positions throughout the race – eventually reaching the chequered flag in 20th place.

While the results may not have been ideal, Evans still took out plenty of learnings from the round, including handling tyre degradation in the Brad Jones Racing prepared Chevrolet Camaro.

“It’s been a pretty big learning weekend. We’ve adapted a different style or philosophy when it comes to setup, which requires some adjustment from the driving side of things or technique,” said Evans.

“Saturday’s race was pretty difficult. I struggled with some pain and some numbness in my leg, so I didn’t really feel like I could get the most out of it. And unfortunately, it looked like the best we could have done on Sunday was 18th and being the first BJR car.

“There’s some little things that I did better. I got a much better start today and was able to race a few of the other cars around, but in the end, it wasn’t an ideal weekend and I still have some homework to do for the upcoming rounds.

“I think the biggest takeaway is tyre degradation and understanding the tyre once again. It’s a very difficult thing to get on top of and it really punishes you to lean on a little bit too hard in the early phases of each stint.

“That’s a work in progress, but I feel like I’m starting to understand it more and more. I would say that’s the key takeaway from this weekend.

“We kept it simple this week. We just wanted to bank some valuable laps. I was pretty happy with the way our race went, except for losing a bit of time in the second pit stop, which cost us a couple of positions.”

The Repco Supercars Championship’s next round will be the NED Whisky Tasmania SuperSprint on August 16-18, while Evans will next be in action for the Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS at Queensland Raceway on August 2-4.