Brad and Kim Jones have had some very successful years in motorsport, but fair to say 2017 wasn’t one of them – not by their high standards anyway.
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The owners of Brad Jones Racing were looking to this year being another step up the ladder of Supercar racing, especially with the signing of Nick Percat.
Percat’s year started awkwardly with a first lap mistake in the season opener in Adelaide, putting him into the wall at 200km/h.
It got worse at the Grand Prix event in Melbourne with his brakes failing at 255km/h.
The resulting accident destroyed his BJR racer, but thankfully Percat was okay.
There was a flash of what he is capable of at the year’s seventh event in Darwin, where he finished third in race one, but it would be his only top-five finish of the year.
He finished 19th in the championship with an average finishing position of 15th.
There is no doubt Percat has plenty of ability and boss Brad Jones will looking to unleash it in 2018.
Tim Slade also had a year of frustration, not quite getting the consistency that most thought would come in his second season with the Albury-based squad.
Bad luck seemed to follow Slade at most events, hurting his chances of claiming several top-five finishes.
He had a very fast car at the marquee Bathurst event, but a heavy shunt in the first practice session on Thursday put him and co-driver Andre Hiemgartner behind the eight ball.
They had good pace on race day, but a driver’s cool-suit system failure late in the race saw Slade’s body temperature reach dangerous levels forcing a late driver change and an eventual ninth placing.
He bounced back strongly at the next event on the Gold Coast with a great drive in the rain to finish third and repeated the performance in with another third in the year’s final event on the streets of Newcastle.
Slade finished the year 11th in the championship with an average finishing position of 13th.
BJR are making some significant changes for 2018, not least of which is a change of engine supplier to KRE Engines and building three new ZB Commodore race cars for Slade, Percat and Tim Blanchard.
They have also recruited former Williams F1 team manager, Pete Vale, as the new team manager.
Vale started late in the year, but progress could be seen as quickly as the last event in Newcastle where the team scored a podium and three top-10 finishes across the weekend.
“We’ve got plenty of work to do over summer,” team boss Brad Jones said.
“But I think we will take a pretty big step forward next year.
“It will be Nick’s second year with us and he and Slady work really well together.
“Combining that with a few other things we are doing, and I’m pretty confident that it will be a good year for us,” Jones added.