Woody’s weekend started with his one-lap pace looking as strong as it had been two weeks earlier in Perth, where he scored his maiden pole and victory. He ended Friday’s final practice sessions second and first, and he subsequently qualified fourth in Saturday’s first grid-setting session, from where another podium looked on the cards.
But his race lasted barely a handful of laps. Ryan’s WAU Mustang had been leaking fluid during an early safety car period, and the engine let go just as the race resumed, forcing him to park by the side of the main straight as the field blasted past him at full speed.
A herculean effort by his team got him back out for the second race of the day. Woody had qualified 11th on the supersoft tyre, and he picked his way up to sixth before making a stop for four fresh tyres on lap 23.
A strong final stint saw him climb from 16th to eighth before running off the track and dropping a pair of places, one of which he got back before the race ended behind the safety car.
“Quali went really good on Saturday, with fourth to start, but then we just missed it a little bit for 11th on the supersoft. I’m obviously gutted for the engine to blow — it really hurt our points this weekend — but the team did an amazing job to get it fixed for the next race in under two hours. I had pretty good car speed in the supersoft race — we raced our way up to ninth, which was a decent result.
Woody was in strong form on Sunday when he topped qualifying to take provisional pole back on the soft tyre. It proved a double-edged sword, however, with the shootout taking place at Hidden Valley baked in heat of the early afternoon. Ryan, last of the runners, copped the track at its worst, placing him fourth on the grid.
With eyes forward, he made a strong start and was up to third almost immediately thanks to a gutsy move around the outside of the first turn that put him in a podium position for the first time all weekend,
By Ryan’s first stop on lap 24 put him on the back foot again, with a fuel gauge issue meaning he failed to take on his planned load of fuel for the second stint.
The botched stop undid Ryan’s race, allowing several other drivers to behind him to undercut him. Though he recovered to fourth by the end of his second stint, he would be back in the lane less than 20 laps later to refuel for a long final stint.
It was an attacking last blast, but eighth was the best he could salvage on Sunday afternoon, leaving him with fewer points than his pace suggested should have been on offer in Darwin.
“On Sunday morning we did an awesome job in quali with provisional pole. I just probably missed the mark in the shootout and started the race fourth. Then we probably shot ourselves in the foot following the cars around us. We really just hurt ourselves and ended up eighth. Our pace felt like it was pretty good, but we just made a few wrong choices, and it didn’t help at the first stop that the fuel didn’t go in because of the fuel churn, so that set us back quite a bit as well.
“Mixed emotions this weekend. It’s nice to be disappointed with and eighth and a ninth this weekend, and obviously a DNF is not great, but considering where we were here last year, it was a massive improvement.”
Round 7 of the Supercars Championship takes place on 11–13 July with the Townsville 500 at Reid Park Street Circuit.
