Dutton back engineering Whincup this weekend

Jamie Whincup has said a top 10 finish in Townsville "would be great" given his recent form in his Red Bull Racing Australia Commodore.

The six-time and defending Champion heads to the Castrol EDGE Townsville 400 - a track where he's won seven of 13 races staged - and with a restructured engineering team on his car, knows he needs something to change if he's to take an unprecedented seventh title. He currently sits eighth in the Championship, 386 points behind leader Mark Winterbottom.

As reported earlier this week, the Red Bull team is running a new structure this weekend,with technical director Ludo Lacroix absent from the meeting.

Whincup confirmed his former engineer Mark Dutton will be back running car #1, with team boss Roland Dane stepping into the team principal role.

Dutton engineered Whincup to five of his six Championship titles, with David Cauchi stepping into the role last year. The relationship was under scrutiny early on with Whincup further back in the points than expected - but Whincup says he will still be an integral part of the engineering crew.

In fact, he said that working with Dutton would not be like getting back on a bicycle despite their years working together.

"We have to do something and just made a slight change in the engineering department, [we'll]see if it makes a difference - might be better, might be worse," Whincup said.

"It'll be good for 'Dutto' to understand the current cars, and thing like that, so he can make some big calls for the whole engineering group, but basically all year we're a big team.

"Although 'Shippy' [Grant McPherson] has been on Craig's [Lowndes's] car and Cauchi's been on mine, it's pretty much an engineering group, so the change is not going to be that significant. We're all going to get back in the truck and we're all going to come up with decisions.

"So it's a smaller change than it looks from the outside."

Dane told v8supercars.com.au in the week having Dutton on car #1 wouldn't be ideal because the long-term plan should utilise him as team manager.

Lacroix - who has previously run Whincup - is "possibly pencilled in" for the role moving forward.

"Nothing's confirmed, just see how we go this weekend and make another call after that," Whincup said.

His record at the Townsville street circuit is remarkable, and Whincup didn't want to dampen that - but he knows not to rely on it either.

"The car's good, we've got good people, we've got all the resources here but we haven't been able to put it together the last few rounds," he said.

"We're in a pretty ordinary, or the worse position we've been in since I joined Triple Eight in 2006.

"It [a turnaround] won't happen overnight and I normally come in here and if I'm not on a podium it's a bad day, but to be honest a top 10 would be great, a top five would be best...

"It's not going to happen overnight, it might take three or four rounds but we need to start somewhere and we're starting this weekend."