After a fighting performance at Sydney Motorsport Park, Brett Holdsworth enters the final round of the Trans Am season just 20 points away from third place in the standings.
The first of back-to-back rounds to conclude the season saw a four race format across just two days, with Holdsworth qualifying eighth. The first race took place under the lights on Friday night, with Holdsworth battling to a 10th place result, struggling for turn-in.
In the second race, early on Saturday afternoon, Holdsworth looked set for another 10th place result until a late Safety Car bunched the field up. A drag race to the line saw Holdsworth miss out on a top 10 by just 0.0051 seconds. Race three saw a positive change for the Breeze Holiday Parks Camaro, as Holdsworth climbed to seventh. The final race of the weekend saw another seventh place result, coming amid more struggles for overall grip.
The season concludes at Mount Panorama, where Holdsworth last year enjoyed his strongest round of the 2022 season. The Ashley Seward Motorsport prepared entry was on course for a second place finish in the 100km finale, before Holdsworth was taken out on the final lap of the race.
With a maximum of 200 points on offer across the final three races of the season, Holdsworth is just 20 points away from reclaiming the third place in which he finished last year’s championship.
“We just struggled all weekend, with tyre and general grip,” said Holdsworth.
“It’s just four days until the next one, and we’ve got some serious thinking to do. Ideally, we can load up the exact setup we had at Bathurst last year and be strong, because that’s the fastest this car has ever felt.
“The first part of the weekend here we were just struggling to get it turned, and just overall grip. By the last two races it felt a bit like a Sprintcar, it was just driving sideways and we’d worked the tyres pretty hard. We threw some massive changes at the car across the weekend, so hopefully looking back through the data there’s something there that helps us identify a fix before Friday.
“Third in the championship is right there, and that’s a genuine target for us. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t collect the silverware at the end of the year,” concluded Holdsworth.
The Bathurst International gets underway from November 10-12 at Mount Panorama, as part of the Shannons SpeedSeries.