Oran Park: Garry Rogers Motorsport preview

Taking the Sydney Shuffle to Oran Park

Oran Park's short but exciting 2.6-kilometre layout will play host to this weekend's eighth round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series and Garry Rogers Motorsport pilots Cameron McConville and Andrew Jones are feeling positive after a successful test day.

The duo, along with GRM endurance signings Phil Scifleet and Lee Holdsworth, tested at Winton in Victoria last Tuesday, and reported the day to be an positive one overall, especially after struggling in the last couple of rounds at Queensland Raceway and Hidden Valley.

"We had some good tyres to use and we were able to run some of the fastest laps I've done around Winton in quite some time," reported McConville.

"We're not going to make grand predictions, but the day was positive. It's always better to be heading to the next round with a positive outlook than anything else.

"Oran Park is a place I'm very familiar with. It's an exciting little circuit with plenty of rise and fall - there's a particularly fast 'dog leg' section which rises and falls and is completely blind as you crest the rise - it certainly grabs the attention pretty quickly if you make a mistake!

"We've slipped back in the championship points over the last few rounds. A lack of speed has hurt us but at least we've been able to plug away and collect points and reliably finish the races.

"The endurance races are really looming up fast, so this is our last race before we switch to 'enduro mode' and have two drivers in each car."

Oran Park is familiar ground for McConville as the circuit was his home test track during his spell with the Lansvale team.

He finished eighth there in 2001, ninth in 2003 and had qualified in the top 10 shootout in 2002 before a mechanical failure forced him to retire from a strong position. Jones is making his V8 Supercar debut at Oran Park. Despite racing in the HPDC Development V8 Supercar Series for two seasons, no rounds were contested at the Narellan circuit. However, Jones has raced there before in a Formula Ford.

"It's a good little fun sort of a race track - I'm a big fan of it," says Jones.

"There's a bit of stop-start, some undulation, and the fast 'dog leg' is a pretty impressive sequence of corners.

"On our test day I was feeling sick and not the best. I only did a few laps and our enduro signings did the majority of laps in my car for the day. They both did a good job."

Round eight of the V8 Supercar Championship Series will be made up of two 140-kilometre races, with compulsory tyre changes in each. Network Ten will telecast all of the action from 2.30pm to 5.00pm on August 14.

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