2024 NTI Townsville 500 – Bendix Racing Round Wrap-Up

The sixth stop on the 2024 Supercars Championship brought Bendix Racing over to sunny Queensland for the 2024 NTI Townsville 500. Townsville’s Reid Park Street Circuit would set the scene for Race 13 and 14 of the 2024 Championship with Nick Percat behind the wheel of the Bendix Racing Camaro, still adorned with its Indigenous livery from the Darwin round.

Friday’s on-track activities were reserved for Practice sessions to allow the drivers to refamiliarise themselves with the layout. Practice 1 took place early in the afternoon and would see Nick Percat take the 20^th fastest lap amongst the pack with a best time of 1m14.944s. Practice 2 would kick away later in the afternoon and see Nick improve upon that standing, claiming the 11^th fastest lap with a best time of 1m14.375s.

Saturday would kick off with Qualifying for Race 13 with Nick earning himself a P14 start on the grid for that afternoon’s race with a 1m13.730s best lap. The green lights would go out on Race 13 towards the end of the day and would start in dramatic fashion. Nick would get caught up in a three-wide clash through Turn 3 on the first lap, sending him down the pack. Nick would continue the race but ultimately cross the Race 13 chequered flag in P21. Nick had the following to say to round out Saturday’s efforts.

Nick Percat: “It wasn’t ideal but that’s just motorsport; so I just drove around for 70 laps. Had a play with some different lines and different ways to try and save the tyres for tomorrow’s race. Couldn’t do too much about the ballast because it was still a little bit damaged from the hit. The boys did a mega job to get it back on track and obviously score points for the team — those are the races that you get to at the end of the year and you’re grateful you got the extra points. I think there’s plenty of positives from Cam’s car in race trim, so we’ll have a look at that tonight and go again tomorrow.”

Sunday began with Qualifying for Race 14 which would see Nick claim another P14 start on the grid thanks to a 1m13.824s best lap. Race 14 kicked away late in the afternoon and would see Nick battle a steering issue throughout the entire race. Despite this, he would bring the car home, ending the weekend with a P20 race result. Nick had the following to say to cap off his weekend in Townsville.

Nick Percat: “We’ve just had one of those days you put down to a bad day of motorsport. We had a bit of an issue with the steering — kind of realised on Lap 2 I was in trouble, so just brought the car home to get some team points and championship points and survived. It was 88 laps of just hanging out and cutting laps of Townsville. Could be worse, but not the result we wanted. We’ll bounce back at SMP and go again. A little bit disappointing but we’ll just regroup and get ready to go again.”

With the 2024 NTI Townsville 500 in the books, we see Nick Percat move to 9^th on the leaderboard with 940 points. In the team standings, Matt Stone Racing move to 7^th place on the leaderboard with a total of 1702 points.

The 2024 Supercars Championship continues later this month when the series heads to NSW for the 2024 Panasonic Air Conditioning Sydney SuperNight, running from July 19^th – 21^st.

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