PREMIAIR Racing’s brave call to roll the dice on wet tyres in the Sunday leg of the Sydney 500 didn’t pay off, but there was only one element that team principal Roland Dane regretted witnessing.
Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser were running 12th and 19th when PremiAir called both cars in for a Lap 31 pitstop under Safety Car conditions to trade slicks for wets.
Erebus Motorsport followed suit the next lap with Cooper Murray, but no one else blinked despite the threatening skies.
A major opportunity beckoned had the rain intensified, but ultimately within a matter of green flag laps all three had to give the game away, leaving them to be last of the lead-lap runners at the chequered flag.
“I suppose the only thing I’m unhappy with is that we did it with both cars,” Dane told V8 Sleuth.
“I would have liked to have done one and one, frankly (i.e. split strategies).
“If the rain had stayed on the trajectory then we probably all would have been on wets but it didn’t, so that’s the reality.”
Both drivers were philosophical about how things panned out.
Pic: Ross GIbb
“We bet it all on black and didn’t win big, but that’s racing,” said Fraser.
“Sometimes you roll the dice and it doesn’t fall your way. That’s just the gamble we took as a team.”
Ojeda added: “We took a gamble on the wet tyre and it almost worked for us, but in the end we had to switch back to slicks, which took us out of contention.
That’s racing sometimes you’ve got to take the risk and back yourself. Today it didn’t pay off, but other days it will.”