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Will Brown believes that he needs to make more effective use of Friday practice sessions in order to turn his form around in the Dunlop Super2 Series.
Brown, who was on the verge of a breakthrough win on the final day of last season, was expected to challenge for race victories if not the title in his second year in Super2.
However, the Toowoomba driver currently sits eighth in the series, 284 points behind series leader and Eggleston Motorsport team-mate Paul Dumbrell.
To date, his best weekend has been the season-opener in Adelaide when he was classified fourth in the only Armor All Qualifying session and finished fifth, sixth, and third in the races which followed.
His four worst results have come in the four races for which he has started outside the top 10.
At Symmons Plains, the #38 VF Commodore finished ninth from 15th on the grid in Race 1.
Brown was 19th and 17th in the two qualifying sessions during Round 3 at Barbagallo, finishing the first two races 18th and 20th (after an early off).
He came home 13th in Race 3 after starting 20th due to that grid being set from the earlier race results.
Only in Race 2 at Symmons Plains, when Brown started second and finished eighth, has he lost a significant number of positions over the course of a race.
“To tell you the truth I just think that we’re not getting it right early enough in the weekend,” Brown told Speedcafe.com.
“In the last race of the weekend at Perth I had the second-fastest lap and I think 11 of the laps I was quicker than some of the front guys.
“I think that throughout the weekend we get the pace but it’s just that we’re not getting it early enough in the weekend for qualifying and as we all know, Dunlop Series is very competitive these days and if you’re not really qualifying in the top five it makes it a tough weekend.
“Me and my engineer (Dan Kroehn) need to work well together in the 40-minute practice sessions we have at Townsville (next round).
“There’s no point going out there and just doing two 20-minute runs or whatnot; we need to go out there and do shorter (runs) and more changes if we’re not happy with how the car rolls out.”
The 20-year-old tested last Thursday at Winton along with another team-mate from the four-car EMS stable, Nathan Morcom.
He believes that the outing will help to cure a shortcoming in drive which is believed to be the main reason for his lack of competitiveness so far.
“We’ve probably been lacking a little bit of drive and that could be because of our turn, not getting it rotated,” explained Brown.
“We did focus on making sure we’re happy with the front end and I think we took a lot of positives away and learned a fair bit.”
Round 4 of the Dunlop Super2 Series supports the Watpac Townsville 400 on July 6-8.
Brown will then run with Erebus Motorsport in the Additional Driver session at Queensland Raceway on July 20 in preparation for his first Pirtek Enduro Cup campaign.
