Courtney 'kicking himself' over lost points

Holden Racing Team driver James Courtney is looking for a repeat of last year's result at Queensland Raceway and to shoot back up in the Championship standings.

The 2010 Champion's season has been nothing short of explosive, with a win out the gate at the season opening Clipsal 500, high profile incidents with teammates and a strong drive at the last race in Townsville, improving from 16th to second in the 200km dash.

Courtney knows the clashes earlier this season have been costly, and admits he has been down on himself for the mistakes.

"I'm kicking myself that I've thrown away quite a few points," the #22 driver, who sits sixth in the Championship, said.

"We'd be a lot closer to the other blokes if that hadn't happened, so I'm beating myself up a little bit about that - but I still think we've got the package here and the boys in the team that we can chase them down and get this thing wrapped up still.

"It's still a long way from being over."

Courtney is 290 points behind leader Mark Winterbottom, with 300 the maximum available across one race weekend, and knows all it will take is one bad weekend from Prodrive to tighten the gap once again.

The HRT driver led the Championship early after his win at Clipsal, but dropped from second to fifth after the first race in Perth, which was a challenging round for the team.

Coming into this weekend'sCoates Hire Ipswich SuperSprint, Courtney knows qualifying is an area for improvement, and an easy way to get early track position - particularly in the quick 60km Saturday races.

He has earned two ARMOR ALL Pole Positions so far this season, at the Clipsal 500 and in Darwin.

"We need good, solid qualifying positions and great race pace in Ipswich," Courtney said.

"The strategy for the weekend is quite different in that it's a SuperSprint format so we have the two 60km races on Saturday so qualifying is going to be extra important and then Sunday we have the longer race.

"It's going to have to be a good, fast, clean weekend and hopefully we can get a good result there.

"We won there last year and we've had a lot of success there and it's somewhere where I enjoy racing - and I still get to stay at home so that's a good bonus!"

Courtney's teammate Garth Tander sits one position behind him in the standings in seventh position.

The leading Holden in the points is Craig Lowndes in second, who is 248 points behind Winterbottom.

There are two practice sessions at Ipswich today, with one additional driver only session this morning. Jack Perkins will be behind the wheel of the #22 HRT Commodore for that session.