Will Brown took a step back in the right direction at the recent Perth SuperNight to put a puzzling drop in form behind him.

The second-year Erebus Motorsport driver had an uncharacteristically challenging time of it at Rounds 2 and 3 of the Repco Supercars Championship at Symmons Plains and Albert Park, before finding his feet out west.

Brown qualified inside the top 10 on all three occasions at Wanneroo Raceway.

While that didn’t translate into a race result in the opening two races, owing to a communications mix-up and a mechanical failure, Brown brought his #9 ZB Commodore home fifth in the Perth finale.

“I think we had really good car pace, I was really happy with the car overall for the weekend,” he told Speedcafe.com.

“I really felt like we were back and happy to tune it, the braking was really good and it was responding to what I wanted it to do. So I felt like we were back.

“The qualifyings were good: we had a sixth, a seventh, and a 10th, and that 10th should have been a little bit better.

“And then from there, a few things didn’t go our way but I can’t change that, it’s all part of it to be honest, and that’s part of racing. If you can’t get over that, you shouldn’t be racing.”

Despite the upswing, Brown did admit an exact cause of his slump had not been identified: “There probably wasn’t one thing that we put our finger on but we did change a lot of things to try to get on top of it, because I don’t think we should have been where we were, and we were obviously a fair way off Brodie [Kostecki, team-mate] as well.

“Since me and Brodie started with Erebus, we’re pretty much within a tenth of each other everywhere we go.

“So I think we did try to do a lot… overall you could see [at Perth] we were a lot more competitive.”

He is now 14th in the championship, six places behind Kostecki.

“I’m not stressed at all or thinking it has been a terrible start,” Brown added.

“It is what it is. I know we have got the pace, I know we can do the job, it’s just about putting it all together and getting that ball rolling again.”

Next up is the Pizza Hut Winton SuperSprint on May 21-22.