[V8SC] Lee Holdsworth column

by Lee Holdsworth



Australian Grand Prix

Two street races in two weeks is one hell of a way to start a season!

After Michael’s crash in Adelaide, it was fortunate for us that last weekend’s event at Albert Park was a non-championship round.

Not surprisingly, we headed into the weekend with strict instructions from Garry to ‘bring the cars home in one piece’. With Michael already in a spare car, and the year’s first ‘fly away’ event just two weeks away, we simply couldn’t afford to leave the AGP with any twisted up metal in the truck.

Albert Park is the type of track where our cars typically struggle, and qualifying was very tough for us. Seeing the #33 down in 22nd on the timesheets at the end of qualifying was a fair bit different from where we were in Adelaide!

The first couple of corners are usually the scene of a bit of carnage at the GP, and the idea of starting down ‘in the 20s’ didn’t sit too well with our objectives for the weekend. With this in mind, we opted to start the races from pit lane. I apologize to our fans who were understandably disappointed by this decision, but putting our cars at risk when there are no points on offer would not have been the smart thing to do.

Garry’s team have always had the reputation of being good old fashioned ‘hard racers’, and I promise we will be racing as hard as anyone at the next round in Hamilton, where we’ll be fighting for points, and hopefully wins.

Despite the controversy surrounding our pit-lane starts, the weekend was actually quite good for us, as we successfully worked towards making our cars quicker on such a big, open track. I had top five pace in each race and the second quickest race lap in the final race. This gives us a lot of confidence in the lead up to Hamilton.

The Hamilton streets make for a great race track; very much like Adelaide, so I’m really looking forward to it. We had great pace there last year until I crashed out in the final race, so as long as I can keep it off the fences we should go alright!

Lee





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