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[V8SC] Lee Holdsworth column
by Lee Holdsworth
pic: ssMEDIA/321Ignition
Races 5 & 6 - Winton Raceway
There’s no hiding it, last weekend was one I’d like to forget. I came to Winton with high hopes of continuing my championship charge. Being my home track, I thought we had a very realistic chance of winning.
I've been running on adrenalin following the success that came from the first two meetings of the year, and to be honest, I nearly forgot how such a terrible weekend makes you feel.
From the start of practice I experienced braking problems, which the team wasn’t able to resolve throughout the weekend. However, this didn't stop me from making the top 10 in qualifying for both races, which I was pleased about considering.
Strategy was absolutely critical at Winton, as it was the first round of the series that the new "sticky" sprint tyre was introduced. Every driver gets one set of "sticky" tyres in which they must use at some point during one of the two races over the weekend.
In Saturday's race I started from 8th. Our strategy was to run the first race with the "sticky" tyre, pit on lap one for our compulsory fuel stop and run through to the end of the 33 lap race. Our strategy was looking good for a while, as we were running 3rd with less than 10 laps to go, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
When the safety car came out for (Jason) Bargwanna’s incident, it brought the field back together. This helped play into the hands of (Craig) Lowndes and (Garth) Tander, who had pitted for "sticky" tyres later in the race than I had. Not surprisingly, Lowndes had blistering pace and soon passed me before taking off into the distance.
Tander then appeared quickly in my mirrors, pulling a late pass on me into Turn 7, and we ran side by side on the exit. He attempted to run me out of road and eventually we clashed wheels causing a puncture to my right front tyre. If any justice was served from the incident it was that the following corner was a left hander ... having a punctured right front meant that I couldn't steer properly... and I took Tander out as a result!
I managed to limp back to the pits and replace the punctured tyre, going on to finish a lap down in 23rd position.
Things went from bad to worse for Sunday’s race. I started from 7th position, and just 20 laps into the 66 lap race I had an electrical fire inside the car. My car rolled to a stop off the edge of the track and the wiring inside the car burst into flames. I had to press the "fire bomb", which thankfully extinguished the flames inside the car. My race was over, and so were my hopes of taking the championship lead away from (Jamie) Whincup... for this weekend at least.
I guess the positive from the weekend was that we came home with a straight clean car that will require little work to prepare for the next round in Tasmania. Over the course of a season, everyone has a bad weekend somewhere, so hopefully we have put our bad one behind us now.
I am now down to 4th in the championship and looking forward to fighting hard to climb back up towards that top spot.
See you in Tassie,
Lee
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