'All smiles' for Fullwood in championship rise

On what proved a tough weekend for Brad Jones Racing, it was “all smiles” for Bryce Fullwood as he consolidated his top 10 championship position.

Fullwood jumped to ninth in the drivers’ standings after a fightback from 19th to 10th in Sunday’s Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 finale.

The #14 Middy’s Electrical Camaro driver was a standout for BJR which, despite a Sunday penalty for Andre Heimgartner, all but solidified third in the teams’ championship.

Heimgartner was pinged over contact with Todd Hazelwood late in Race 26, and was reclassified 17th. Heimgartner is now just one point ahead of Cam Waters for sixth in the championship.

BJR’s best drivers’ and teams’ finish — sixth for Fabian Coulthard and third for the team in 2013 — is still in reach with the VAILO Adelaide 500 to come.

Critically, should Fullwood hang onto ninth, he would help BJR have two cars in the top 10 in the championship since Coulthard and Jason Bright finished sixth and seventh in 2013.

"We qualified 19th which definitely was gonna make the race hard,” Fullwood said. 

"But we had a really fast race car and through some good strategy and some really good lap speed, we were able to make our way up to 12th across the line. 

"And then with a couple extra penalties that were handed out from overuse of kerbs, we were promoted up to 10th. Really productive day. 

"Especially after yesterday, we moved forward a spot in the championship, which after yesterday, I really wasn't sure we were going to be able to do this weekend. So all smiles for now."

BJR’s Sunday got off to a tough start after Macauley Jones was an innocent bystander in a lap 1 clash between James Courtney and Tim Slade.

Courtney and Slade collided at Turn 4, with Jones and BJR stablemate Jack Smith picking up damage. While Smith carried on and finished 19th, Jones was out on the spot with front-end damage.

Team owner Jones initially thought his son could get the #96 Pizza Hut Camaro back to the garage for repairs, before it became clear that the damage was too great.

Regardless, Fullwood’s performance — the Darwin driver taking his 11th top 10 of the season — proved a bright spot for BJR, which is now 137 points ahead of Shell V-Power Racing Team.

Fullwood, meanwhile, is 57 points behind eighth placed Anton De Pasquale.

“It turned out pretty well on a pretty tough weekend for BJR,” Jones told the Schick Cool Down Lap podcast.

“For us, car 14 was our shining light today. It’s good to be third in the championship."