Big points blow as De Pasquale's lap 1 luck runs out

Anton De Pasquale is determined to turn around his Townsville qualifying woes after his luck ran out at Turn 2 in the final race.

The Team 18 driver was caught up in what he termed as an “unavoidable” incident, whereby the #18 Cub Cadet Camaro was sandwiched between Aaron Cameron and Macauley Jones.

Cameron was turned in front of the field, leaving De Pasquale with nowhere to go. Behind was Jones, who drilled De Pasquale’s car. Cameron and Jones retired, while De Pasquale carried on.

Dumped down the order, De Pasquale nursed his damaged car home, but after jumping to fifth overall with Saturday’s podium, immediately fell back to sixth.

“It sort of played out for everyone else, and then I was just kind of there,” De Pasquale said on Supercars’ Equip Super Cool Down Lap podcast.

“Aaron got spun by somebody. He was a few ahead, and then, he just happened to be facing backwards looking at me.

“I stopped, and then Macca was behind me, and then someone was behind him, and concertina’d. So unfortunately, got a bit of damage from that, like some bodywork and stuff.

“Sort of got back to where we started, and that was as good as it was going to get, I reckon.”

Qualifying inconsistency has been a staple of De Pasquale's season. Between starts of second and third in Darwin was a slump to 20th. From the highs of the Darwin finale victory came a start of 14th to open Townsville, before he powered from 11th to second. Then, starting 13th left him vulnerable to the crash.

With Brodie Kostecki dominant across the three days, the Shell V-Power Racing Team jumped Team 18 to fifth.

“This has probably been the outlier for us, and our form's been pretty good recently,” De Pasquale said of Townsville.

“So it's bound to happen. Like, you can't nail it all the time, and we're still learning and developing and stuff. We're gonna miss sometimes.

“Unfortunately, we just weren't able to turn it around this weekend. I think we've got our race car alright.

“Obviously got the podium, and then today, we don't really know what it would've been like. Qualifying was our issue this weekend. Probably won't carry over. We generally roll out alright, so I don't think so, but you never know.

“You’ve got to be on top of your game. We've got to learn as much as we can, and keep moving forward.”

De Pasquale is now 342 points behind leader Matt Payne, having arrived in Townsville 250 off the lead, and has slipped from 66 points to 155 points behind third.