Courtney boosted by third place qualifying effort

James Courtney says the Boost Mobile Racing garage was “going crazy” after he qualified third for the team at Hidden Valley Raceway.

Courtney led Tickford Racing team-mates Cameron Waters who was fourth fastest and Lee Holdsworth in fifth at the end of the Top 15 Shootout.

The qualifying performance was Courtney’s best to date with Tickford Racing since joining the team at the first Sydney SuperSprint event in mid-June.

Courtney said the result brought great emotion for him and engineer Brendan Hogan.

“We’re both very experienced and there was noticeable emotion,” said Courtney after the qualifying session.

“Even when the sessions this morning weren’t great, we were able to pull what we needed to out of it.

“We’re pretty pumped, we were going crazy here. It was like we were winning Bathurst.

“It’s great. Everyone at Boost Mobile has put a lot of faith in these guys and me as well, so to be able to repay them with a qualifying result is good.”

Meanwhile, it was a turn of form for Truck Assist Racing driver Lee Holdsworth.

After claiming podiums at the two Sydney Motorsport Park events, Holdsworth couldn’t repeat those performances in the first leg of the Darwin double-header,

At the Darwin Triple Crown Holdsworth recorded finishes of 10th, 14th, and 12th as he battled car set-up issues.

However, the 37-year-old said the team has been able to resolve those problems.

“We had nothing last weekend; every time I cracked the throttle the rear would come round, it would over-rotate but now we’ve found the trick for that,” said Holdsworth.

“We’re plugging away and I think we can still make it better. We should have a pretty good race car. I was just saying to JC, the old dogs have still got a few tricks up our sleeves.

“We’re all achieving a similar balance in different ways. We’re just skinning the cat in a different way.

“I think we’ve all got a very similar balance but we’ve gone about it in different ways. We’re all understanding why we’re getting the same out of it even though they’re so different.”

Race 16 of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship starts this afternoon at 13:50 local time/14:20 AEST.