2024 Penrite Oil Sandown 500 – Bendix Racing Round Wrap-Up

The ninth round of the 2024 Supercars Championship brought Bendix Racing down south to Victoria for the 2024 Penrite Oil Sandown 500. Sandown Motor Raceway in Melbourne would set the scene for Race 19 of the 2024 Championship with Dylan O’Keefe joining Nick Percat to pilot the Bendix Racing Camaro for the 500km test of endurance.

The weekend would start with a Practice session allowing both drivers to get a feel for the track. The pair would end the session with the 8^th fastest lap amongst the pack after a best time of 1m09.205s. The next practice session would see the team bump their standing up to the 3^rd fastest of the pack thanks to a 1m08.918s best lap. The final practice session would see the team end the day with the 25^th fastest after a best time of 1m09.085s in the session.

Saturday’s on-track action would see the teams battle wet weather conditions for most of the day, starting with the fourth practice session of the round. This session would see the team send the Bendix Racing Camaro around Sandown with the 10^th fastest lap after a 1m14.938s. The final practice session of the weekend would take place shortly afterwards with the team going 14^th fastest amongst the pack after a 1m13.609s best lap.

Qualifying for Race 19 would cap off Saturday’s efforts for Bendix Racing with Nick Percat missing out on a spot in the Top Ten Shootout by just 0.0338s as the chequered flag flew on the session. This would give Bendix Racing a P11 start on the grid to kick off Sunday’s race.

Race 19 would kick away on Sunday afternoon with teams staring down the barrel of 154 laps around Sandown Motor Raceway. The race would see no shortage of incidents with the Bendix Racing Camaro getting sent back to the pits after a mid-race collision. With Dylan O’Keefe behind the wheel, the incident would see Car No.50 push the Bendix Racing Camaro into Car No.17 in the final corner of the track. With the car back in the pits, the team would put in a huge effort to repair the car enough to get it back out onto the track in the later stages of the race. The team would ultimately end the weekend by sending the Bendix Racing Camaro home to a P23 finish. Nick Percat and Dylan O’Keefe had the following to say to cap off the weekend.

Nick Percat: “Just the one that got away for us. The car was really fast and I thought we would have been in the hunt for a podium which is great for car speed but unlucky that we didn’t quite get the result. We’ll rebuild her, make her nice and shiny again, and get ready for Bathurst. The boys did a great job to get the car back out there, but everyone would have had their stories from today. It would have been good to finish at the front but that’s motorsport.”

Dylan O’Keefe: “Pretty unfortunate and a day of what could have been for us. We think we could have been a chance at a podium but unfortunate what happened in my stint. The first stint felt pretty good, the second stint I just struggled to keep the tyres under the car and unfortunately was pretty weak and involved in an incident which shouldn’t have happened. It did, and hopefully we can make up for it at Bathurst.”

With the 2024 Penrite Oil Sandown 500 in the rear-view, we see Nick Percat move to 7^th on the leaderboard with 1440 points. In the team standings, Matt Stone Racing stays at 6^th place on the leaderboard with a total of 2662 points.

The 2024 Supercars Championship continues next month when the series heads to Bathurst, NSW for the 2024 Repco Bathurst 1000, running from October 10^th – 13^th.

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