Brett Holdsworth has closed the gap to the series lead with an up and down weekend that saw the Ashley Seward Motorsport driver secure his first podium of the year.
Holdsworth’s run to the podium seemed extremely unlikely after a pair of practice sessions that cast serious doubt over the team’s ability to get inside the top 10.
“It really felt like the worst car I’d ever driven, at the time we were pretty confused as we rolled in with that same setup we found at Bathurst,” said Holdsworth.
“We made some big setup changes after practice and ventured into some territory we’d never gone before on that front, but we also had green tyres on it for Qualifying. We think a lot of the issues may have been just rubbish tyres, our practice tyres were the same ones we thrashed on the Mountain.”
The Breeze Holiday Parks Camaro ended up third on the grid after a stellar qualifying for Holdsworth, ironically his best of the season after the practice troubles.
In race one Holdsworth fell off the leading Garry Rogers Motorsport duo and fended off a pack of aggressive cars looking for the final step on the podium in the closing laps.
Race two saw solid early run pace but a serious drop off came around halfway as Holdsworth tumbled down the order to finish in ninth, his worst finish of the season but maintaining his 100 percent top 10 record in Trans Am.
“That was pretty frustrating, we got a bit lucky that in the same race some of our title rivals had issues as well. We looked into it afterwards and turns out we just made a mistake with the tyre pressures, it doesn’t take much to be off the pace.”
Holdsworth started the third and final race from fourth with the grid set by accumulative round points across the first two races. An opening lap charge with Holdsworth glued to the bumper of third was halted by a Safety Car. From the restart just 9 laps remained and Holdsworth was unable to get close enough to mount a serious attempt, getting close on a number of occasions and never falling more than a second behind the car in front. The #99 finished in fifth, losing just the one spot to the series leader on a charge from 22nd to 2nd.
“Look I’m really happy with the weekend, obviously I would have loved to get that round podium but the option to pass cleanly never came up and I was pretty keen not to risk a DNF.
“Getting the podium in race one was a good monkey off our back so to speak, it was great to share that with the team after being so close a few times already.
“We learnt a few things this weekend which we will take up to Queensland Raceway and hopefully continue our upward trend.”
After four rounds of the Trans Am Championship Holdsworth is just 55 points off the series lead thanks to his marked consistency – scoring 166, 167, 170 and 170 points again across each round. Round five of the series heads to Queensland Raceway from August 5-7.