HOLDSWORTH FOCUSING ON FUTURE

Lee Holdsworth focusing on the future – Photo: InSyde Media

Mustang set-up and driving style changes deliver much-needed qualifying speed.

By BRUCE NEWTON

FORD STRAGGLER Lee Holdsworth is confident his qualifying dramas are over, enabling him to focus on stringing together good results to secure his Tickford drive in 2020.

Holdsworth knows he needs more performances like the Sunday at Winton, where he qualified in the top 10 and scored a season-best fifth.

He has to continue performing because he is on a single-year deal with Tickford Racing, which has an option to retain his services in the ex-Winterbottom The Bottle-O entry.

“That’s not playing a negative role in my mind,” he said of his contractual outlook. “I have to put my head down and fix my pace in qually, and if I do, I know there will be no reason for the team to want to go in another direction at the end of the year.”

Holdsworth ascribes his dramatic improvement in form, emerging from the lowpoint of qualifying 22nd for the Saturday Perth SuperNight race, to a significant change in set-up that yielded a storming drive to ninth in the Barbagallo finale.

He built on that encouraging performance to make gains at Winton, where he won with Erebus in 2013.

“It’s a relief to get a good direction in qualifying and then build on it in the race,” Holdsworth said. “We haven’t been able to put a whole weekend together.

“It’s a weight off my shoulders to qualify in the top 10 and then come home in the top five with a good bundle of points.

“It’s a confidence-builder for me and it also shows the team what I can do.”

Holdsworth described the changes made after that disastrous Perth qualifying as “a bit of a lightbulb moment” and the Winton set-up initiatives beyond that as “a massive step in the right direction”.

His season has been blighted by poor qualifying, which has marred his ability to score good results. He runs only 12th in the championship and is the lowest ranked of the six Mustang drivers.

It’s been a frustrating stretch for Holdsworth, who spent four fundamentally fruitless years with Charlie Schwerkolt in privateer Holdens before the shift to Tickford Racing.

He effectively swapped seats with Mark Winterbottom, who sits 11th in the championship in Schwerkolt’s Irwin Racing Commodore ZB.

Essentially, Holdsworth says the challenge has been mating his driving style with the characteristics of the Mustang after so many years in Commodores.

“The issues are easy to identify, there’s no doubt,” he said. “It’s just finding a fix for them. The car has the speed, but there’s something inherent in my driving that’s not really gelling with attacking a corner on a green tyre in qualifying.

“I’ve come to the car a little bit, but now I need the car to come to me.

“Entry instability is my greatest problem and I’ve found I need a strong rear end to be fast. The later you brake, the more instability you create because of more pitch in the car.

“It’s not a major problem until you get to qualifying, when you push that little bit harder.”

The man known as ‘Lethal Lee’ explained he also tended to be quite aggressive on the steering wheel in the entry phase of the corner, a characteristic he had tried to calm.

“In a race, that’s an easier thing to consciously drive around,” he said. “But you fall back on natural instincts in qualifying.”

While Holdsworth was convinced that being part of a four-car squad hastened the learning process, he conceded that gelling with new engineer Sam Scaffidi took time.

“We will build that relationship over time,” he said. “Each event, we come out with a lot more knowledge than when we went in.”

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