Alexander Rossi and James Hinchcliffe won’t get as much testing ahead of their wildcard attempt at the Bathurst 1000 as they would have hoped.
Rossi suffered a crash while testing for Bathurst at the Winton Circuit in Victoria, Australia this week, cutting their planned three-day test to just two days.
The specifics of the crash aren’t entirely clear, however, the damage to the No. 27 ZB Holden Commodore the two will field in the endurance race was mostly cosmetic. He allegedly went off at the exit of Turn 4 at the 1.86-mile raceway.
Walkinshaw Andretti United team principal Matthew Nilsson said “the damaged parts are all replaceable,” on the ZB Commodore and added that there was “no major structural damage, and it won’t have an impact on next week at Bathurst.”
“Both drivers and everyone involved took a lot out of two really solid days of running,” Nilsson also said. “They adapted to the car extremely well, and they will be ready for Mount Panorama next week.”
The two IndyCar stars will share the NAPA Autoparts-sponsored entry in Australia’s most famous road race. For Rossi, it will be his first time racing a Supercars series car, while Hinchcliffe last drove one of the right-hand drive tin tops in the Gold Coast 600 back in 2012. Neither has competed in the Bathurst 1000 before.
“The roof, the right-hand side [seat], the [gear] shifter – I haven’t had one of those in quite some time,” Hinchcliffe told media after his first laps in the car this week. “There’s definitely a lot to get used to.”
“The cars behave very differently [to an IndyCar], some of the techniques you need to make the lap time are very different.”
“So a lot of it is hammering out the old habits from the IndyCar and trying to re-program.”
The Bathurst 1000 will kick off with practice on Thursday, October 10th, while the race will go green on Sunday, October 13th. Stay tuned for full coverage on the highly anticipated endurance race.
Source: Racer
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