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Bailey Sweeny reflects on tough Sydney encounter
HMO Customer Racing’s rookie race winner Bailey Sweeny endured a tough round at Sydney Motorsport Park after breaking the team’s Bathurst hoodoo at Easter.
Whereas teammates Josh Buchan and Nathan Morcom each took a victory each at the squad’s home circuit, but Sweeny had a torrid weekend as he finished a best of 11th in what was his worst round so far.
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It comes after a breakthrough Easter event at Bathurst where he qualified the best of the HMO Customer Racing duo and took a stunning victory in Race 2, backing up to finish runner up in the final encounter around the Mountain to Aaron Cameron, although Sweeny set the fastest lap time.
Although it proved a disappointing round at Sydney Motorsport Park, Sweeny believes strides were made in the final race to ensure an enhanced package at Queensland Raceway in a little more than a month’s time.
“It’s been a tough weekend for me overall, but we made some set-up changes towards the end for the final race that moved us forward, so that was positive,” Sweeny said.
“We will go away and learn from these results and come back stronger next time in Queensland.”
Reflecting on Sydney Motorsport Park from a team perspective, Sweeny was excited to watch his teammates have success, which bodes well for the second half of the season.
“I’m really happy for the team and the results for Nathan and Josh, but it was a struggle on my side of the garage,” Sweeny summarised.
Sweeny is not out of title calculations by any stretch of the imagination, trailing Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series leader Tony D’Alberto by 105-points in what is proving to be an extremely condensed fight.
As mentioned prior, Sweeny’s race victory at Bathurst was the fourth maiden win by a driver this season and joined his first podium appearance at AWC Race Tasmania, replicating teammate Buchan’s performance in 2021.
Queensland Raceway returns to the schedule for the first time since the inaugural season of Supercheap Auto TCR Australia in 2019 as part of the SpeedSeries on August 5-7.