WHAT COULD GO WRONG DOES GO WRONG IN TOWNSVILLE
Cooper Murray was on track for strong points on Sunday at the Townsville 500 when a fuel miscalculation undid his race and left him languishing at the back of the pack.
The three-day, three-race weekend started with Cooper just missing his Erebus Camaro’s sweet spot on Friday, leaving him 21st at the end of qualifying, but his race was more competitive.
A stop on lap 21, after having risen into the top 10 in his first stint, opened an aggressive second stint that saw him gain seven places after rejoining last, putting him 17th at the flag for a decent points haul.
Things clicked emphatically on Saturday, with exceptional qualifying speed delivering him his second shootout appearance of the season and putting him seventh on the grid.
A messy opening stanza eventually triggered a safety car on lap 13, which neutralised strategy with Cooper in ninth, and a second stop on lap 47 couldn’t get him ahead of a six- car train battling for fourth place.
Erebus rolled the dice on a dramatically different strategy for Sunday’s 70-lap feature, gambling on a three-stop strategy that would maximise the Camaro’s pace in clear air.
After qualifying 15th, the tactic had Cooper knocking on the door of the top 10 ahead of his third stop, but it was only in the subsequent fourth stint that it became clear he was underfuelled due to a calculation error.
Unable to make it to the finish on his tank, Cooper had to make a damaging fourth stop on lap 67, condemning him to 22nd.
“The weekend started off okay. We missed the window a little bit in qualifying but managed to come forward in the race and finish 17th. Saturday was a lot better. I made it into the shootout, which is really good, and was going for a potential front row before a little mistake at the third-last corner, but I managed to finish P7 in that, and then we came away with P9 in the race. We didn’t have enough speed to move forward but had enough to maintain where we finished. That was a good result for the team — Jack (le Brocq) came seventh as well. On Sunday in qualifying we just missed the window a little bit as well and just missed out on the shootout. But the race was a totally different story — what could’ve gone wrong did go wrong. It was a race to forget, and there will be a lot of lessons learnt for all personnel before Ipswich to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”