Andre Heimgartner has made an impressive start to the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at the Superloop Adelaide 500, finishing eleventh and tenth respectively in the teams’ first outing in the Ford Mustang.
Driver of the NED Racing Mustang impressed on lookers as he placed 11th and 14th for practice 1 and 2; where both session results mattered. Placing just outside of the top ten meant Heimgartner would take to the grid for Qualifying part 1. The 24-year old had a respectable Qualifying session, challenging Percat for top position, where he managed to pip him for first place with a 1:20.2442.
With an honourable run, this took the #7 driver into Qualifying part 2, against the original top ten finishers of Friday’s practice session. Heimgartner was just robbed of the Top Ten Shootout after clipping the wall at Turn 8, meaning 13th was where he would start Race 1.
The young Kiwi was able to continue to impress in the race, picking up two more positions and crossing the line just outside the top ten in eleventh for Saturday’s race.
Unfortunately, Qualifying didn’t quite go to plan on Sunday and 19th was the best Heimgartner could do. The crew at Kelly Racing worked hard on tuning the NED Racing Mustang and with a few changes, managed to turn the car around ahead of the final race.
Andre made sure to keep his head down and worked his way through the pack with a very respectable drive and at the end of the 78-lap race, crossed the line in 10th.
“The weekend as a whole has been really positive for the whole team, everything went smoothly, we had great reliability and the pit stops were good,” admitted Heimgartner.
“We found speed across the weekend and were able to have a pretty good race on Sunday, I felt like I was able to race with the cars around me and the car had good balance.
“We’re now looking forward to building on the progress that we’ve made with the car so far this weekend and getting to Melbourne where the track is a pretty similar style to The Bend, where we proved to be quite quick. So hopefully we can have a successful round at Melbourne.”
The Virgin Australia Supercars next hit the track at the Beaurepaires Melbourne 400, 12-15 March.
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