Tickford making no excuses for subdued Darwin

Tickford Racing will be out for redemption at the second leg of the Darwin doubleheader after a lacklustre showing last weekend.

Hidden Valley Raceway was expected to better suit the characteristics of the team’s Mustangs than Sydney Motorsport Park, where they had still been very competitive.

Tickford’s quartet ran strongly throughout last year’s visit to the Top End but were mired in the midfield for pretty much all of last weekend besides James Courtney’s strategy-inspired second in the Saturday race.

Lee Holdsworth, who had back-to-back podiums at the Sydney rounds, admitted they straight up lacked competitiveness; having taken 10th, 14th and 12th in the three starts.

“I don’t think there are any excuses, we just need to come back with a better car next week,” said the Truck Assist Mustang driver.

“We have a pretty good idea why, which is a positive, but yeah, we just never looked particularly strong [last weekend], so that was disappointing.

“We stayed out of trouble, scored some points, but overall not a great weekend for our car or the team really, at least for where we want to be.

“We have a lot of work to do… but I’m confident we’ll come back with a better car next weekend.”

Teammate Cameron Waters’ top five drought is now nine races deep spanning back to February’s Adelaide 500 – although the Mildura product was hampered by some misfortune in the Triple Crown finale that he’d started from fifth.

“In the stop the boys couldn’t the wheel off because the wheel and nut-locking mechanism had some damage from another car, and that put us back to around 12th,” said Waters.

“I got a spot back, but it’s a shame… we probably gave a way a potential podium in that race.

“We still have some deficits we have to fix in our package, but we’ll keep chipping away.”

Recent first-time race winner Jack Le Brocq meanwhile reported discovering “a good direction” to take forward into the CoreStaff Darwin SuperSprint this weekend.

Five sets of soft compound tyres will be made available for each car across qualifying and three 38-lap races.