Brett Holdsworth suddenly finds himself entering the two week finale of the Trans Am season as one of the leading title contenders.
The second runner-up in the 2022 season is once again third in the championship, after a significant points shakeup that saw the leading pair in this year’s series disqualified from the round three results. Holdsworth had already been enjoying a resurgence in the points standings of late, after a difficult start to the year, and finds himself just 25 points adrift of the series lead.
The Breeze Holiday Parks Camaro has earned two podium finishes so far in 2023, one of which came at Phillip Island before a race three mechanical failure plummeted Holdsworth backwards in the standings. Contact from multiple cars in two of Winton’s three races also cost the Ashley Seward Motorsport car some valuable ground, before a resurgence came at Sandown, with a third place finish in race two.
The series heads this weekend to Sydney Motorsport Park, where last year Holdsworth qualified an equal best third, and picked up a race one podium under lights. The four race format this year sees practice and qualifying on Friday before race one later that night. Saturday sees a day race, a twilight race and another race under the lights to wrap up the weekend.
“I feel like we had such a rough start to the year with mechanical issues, and we’re almost back to what we would have been anyway without those problems,” said Holdsworth.
“For sure there’s a bit of luck involved, but we’ve copped the raw end of the stick more than enough times, so nice to get a boost like this. I went and did my first test day in a long time, a week ago, which is another step in the right direction for us. It’s felt like we’ve improved across the weekend at every round, so coming off a test day should allow us to start the round further forward in that process.
“No one is going to win the title by sitting back, but I’m certainly thinking of our approach last year where some cautious aggression gave us some great results. It’s good to be going into the final couple of weeks with a shot, I feel like a NASCAR driver with these back to back races.
“The night racing is a positive for us, I feel like the cooler temperatures should be a helping hand with the setup we have, and how we work the tyre. Conserving those tyres will be a massive factor though with four races, so it’s going to be a very intriguing weekend,” Holdsworth concluded.
The penultimate round of the Trans Am season takes place from November 3-4 as part of the Shannons SpeedSeries Race Sydney.