Ojeda Battles Through Challenging Ipswich Super 440 Weekend
Jayden Ojeda has endured a difficult Century Batteries Ipswich Super440 at Queensland Raceway, with the challenging weekend for the PremiAir Racing driver ultimately yielding three finishes outside the top 15.
The weekend began positively, with Ojeda showing improved pace across Friday's practice sessions before qualifying 20th for Race 26. Locked into his qualifying set-up under parc ferme conditions, Ojeda finished 18th in the opening race.
Saturday afternoon proved more difficult, with Ojeda qualifying 23rd for Race 27. Contact with David Reynolds on Lap 11 resulted in a 15-second time penalty, with the incident and subsequent penalty limiting Ojeda to 24th at the finish.
"With the penalty in the second race this afternoon and multiple safety car periods, we were just out of sync," said Ojeda.
"I feel like we're starting to find a little bit of speed out of our car, so we'll have a think on it tonight and come back tomorrow for a new day."
The team continued working on the car's balance overnight, with Ojeda qualifying 19th for Sunday's final race. Improved race pace provided a more competitive package, but a spin while attempting an overtake on Andre Heimgartner dropped Ojeda down the order, leaving him to finish 18th.
"Not the round we were hoping for at all," said Ojeda.
"A couple of errors by me in both races really affected the results, so a massive apology to the team and partners. Overall I think our car today in the race was much more competitive, so it's been good to get on top of the issues we've had with car balance throughout the weekend and finish with a faster car."
PremiAir Racing worked throughout the weekend to address the balance issues that had limited the #31 entry, with the improved pace on Sunday providing a positive to take from a difficult round.
"The weekend started off positive in practice before the car stopped responding to the standard changes we've learnt tend to work when tuning the car," said Andrew Gilliam, Ojeda’s race engineer.
"We got a little bit lost with our direction trying to get the balance back to have competitive pace."
While the Ipswich round did not deliver the results Ojeda or PremiAir Racing were targeting, the team leave Queensland Raceway with a better understanding of the car and a more competitive package heading into the next phase of the championship.