"One Race at a Time" Cautions HRT Boss

Process-driven Holden Racing Team boss Steve Hallam is not about to make any bold predictions about more wins coming soon.

The Formula One veteran – who took over the struggling Walkinshaw Racing operation in late 2011, led a rebuild through 2012 and a painful start to 2013 – watched on as Garth Tander led James Courtney home in Race 21 of the Championship at the Sucrogen Townsville 400 eight days ago.

“You know me, one race at a time,” The Englishman cautioned post-race. “We still need to pick over what we learned at Townsville and we have a program in place that will run for the balance of the year with various milestones that need to be met.”

The win, created by excellent strategy and strong soft tyre life, broke a 58 race losing streak for the factory team that dates back to the 2011 Supercheap Auto 1000.

It came almost against the flow of the weekend, as all four Walkinshaw-built Commodore VFs – the HRT entries, Russel Ingall’s Supercheap Auto car and Tony D’Alberto’s Team HIFLEX racer – suffered shock absorber breakages.

Replacement shocks were flown in Friday night from the operation’s Melbourne base and fitted overnight, but rear shocks began breaking on Saturday, prompting the team to revert from Sachs to Ohlins dampers. Ingall, however, ran on Sachs dampers during his epic drive from 26th to fifth on Sunday. D’Alberto finished an excellent sixth on Ohlins.

“The car is on a development plan and we had an unfortunate setback here with the breakages,” Hallam told v8supercars.com.au. “But we did manage to get back on that plan and keep going and we came off this weekend feeling pretty good.”

Not that Hallam was prepared to admit to much more than a feeling of satisfaction that the restructure of the team he had instigated soon after arriving was now paying dividends.

“The patience of some people made me wonder at times but there is a methodology to this and depending on where you start on the curve and where you want to get to it takes time and you just can’t accelerate that. You have to go through the steps, get it right and get it done.

“Motor races at this level are always hard to win and as a result they are all special,” he added. “Even the ones that appear easy to the public there is something going on in the background and you just have to work through it and take each lap as it comes and the issues that arise.

“Just pace yourself, never get ahead of yourself and support the engineers, settle them down if necessary – these guys don’t need settling down – and just be patient.”

The next Championship event is the Coates Hire Ipswich 360 at Queensland Raceway, where Tander suffered the ignominy of being lapped in one race last year.

That was one of HRT’s lowest ebbs as the team did double duty, racing the old ‘Project Blueprint’ Commodore while developing the new Car of the Future for 2103.

But the start of this year showed the new car was not competitive with the Triple Eight Commodores. That prompted a redesign of the front-end that began to show true pace at the SKYCITY Triple Crown in Darwin where Courtney managed a pole position and led race 18.

“The guys know what they need to do, they are gaining in confidence every time we go racing,” Hallam said. “We were pretty strong in Darwin and to be strong there you need to have a good car.

“Going to Townsville we were as confident as we dare be in this business. We had the knock-backs with the dampers but we overcame them, not without a bit of sweat and effort but that is what is a team is for and that is what a team does.”