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Grand Am
IN THE COCKPIT: Jason Bright: The Comeback
There’s no doubt the last couple of years have been a little bit lean for me as far as results go.
Jason Bright  | http://www.jasonbright.com.au/  |  Posted March 18, 2011  
Brighty is hoping the 2011 V8 Supercars season continues to deliver strong results. (BJR)
V8 Supercars is like any sport … you always get your knockers, and there’s no doubt the last couple of years have been a little bit lean for me as far as results go.

But all along I’ve been a pretty hard judge of myself and I analyzed pretty heavily where I thought we were as a team.

I always felt that I was driving as well as I ever had so I knew that, when we did get it right, I would be competitive again.

I think we’re at that point now.

It’s nerve wracking to say it because you don’t want to jinx yourself but I see all the right ingredients and I see the results and I see the potential still to come so even with a bit of jinxing I think we should still be right!

Abu Dhabi was the proof I needed that we’re going to get some pretty good results this year. Even at the start of the race we were quicker than Frosty and I felt we could take it to Whincup. By the end of the race we had to chase down Courtney over so many laps that, by the time we’d caught him, our rear tyres had done a lot more work compared to his whilst he was leading the race, conserving fuel (see the final laps here www.youtube.com/watch? v=URvFR9Ml0vU).

It’s racing like that that makes V8 Supercars such a compelling category and its international appeal is definitely growing if the social media networks are anything to go by.
Honest to a fault, Bright admits he and the BJR team need to make their way to the front of the grid more often. (BJR)

We just received FIA international status, which means a couple of things for V8s: we’ve been recognized as a very professionally run category and we can now host more races in this region.

From the home reaction to Abu Dhabi though, I think Australian fans obviously believe we should only race in Australia in front of Australian spectators.

The biggest misconception with that seems to be the thought that by not doing an international event we would have another Australian event, but we’ve reached the limit of how many races we can do in Australia.

There is only a certain amount of venues that can successfully promote an event and draw a large enough crowd to be sustainable. There are, however, plenty of other markets in the region that could make it financially viable for the teams, which means an extra race on TV for everyone!

There are certainly more circuits in our region that I’d like to have a go at, like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and India. I think it’s fantastic that we’re being asked to go to different venues and it’s awesome for the teams and drivers to be able to drive on circuits like Abu Dhabi, which is the world’s benchmark facility.

Adelaide’s street circuit, where we’re racing this weekend, is also a benchmark facility when it comes to road tracks and I’ve had a couple of pole positions here before and a win. This weekend we’ve got to make the right decisions come practice, qualifying and racing but, providing we get these right, we should be a serious contender.

From my point of view, there are seven areas you need to get right to win races week in and week out: qualifying speed, race speed, starts, pit stops, reliability, strategy and fuel economy.

At this stage I’d say the areas we still need to improve are reliability, starts, qualifying speed and fuel economy but we had a two-day test at Winton last week and that really helped.

I still think a lot of people don’t realise how competitive we’re going to be this year.

~Jason

Jason Bright races in the V8 Supercar Championship with Trading Post Racing. He is a race winner in the category and finished third in the standings in 2001 and 2004. He progressed to V8s after a successful single-seater career, which included winning the 1995 Australian Formula Ford Championship and finishing sixth in the 2000 Indy Lights series with five podiums.

Learn more about Jason by visiting www.jasonbright.com.au and on his official Facebook page.
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Jason Bright

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