Series champion Tony D’Alberto says that he needs to mount a significant recovery effort if he’s to remain a title contender at this weekend’s Supercheap Auto TCR Australia round at Queensland Raceway.

The Honda Wall Racing driver, who took the title in a nail-biting final race at Bathurst last year, currently sits eighth in the standings heading into this weekend’s fourth round at ‘The Paperclip’.

“I mean, we’re on the backfoot. There’s no doubt we’re not where we want to be or should be; we’ve got our work cut out for us,” D’Alberto told Speedcafe.

“But you know, we’re making steps to hopefully bridge the gap to some of the front guys and we hope with a new car coming, that’ll help. It’s definitely helped out our competitors.”

D’Alberto is still running the FK8-model Honda Civic, which was replaced by the new 11th-generation Civic road car (codenamed FL5) in late 2021 with the Type R variant released earlier this year.

JAS Motorsport tested the FL5 Civic TCR car for the first time in Italy last December, with D’Alberto hoping to debut his at the Sandown round on September 8-10.

It was the lack of straight-line performance of the FK8 at certain tracks – most notable at Mount Panorama – that Alberto hopes will be addressed by the new model.

“The current car isn’t completely off the pace … but my generation of car now is at least five years old, so with all new evolutions of vehicles they just refine and make it nicer and of course, the car should be quicker to entice people to buy the new car.

“That’s what we’ve seen in every base, every manufacturer that’s bought out a new car. They’re just have that little bit of an edge, so we’re hoping the same.”

Hyundai drivers Bailey Sweeny and Josh Buchan are first and second in the points respectively, with Jordan Cox third in the Schaeffler Garry Rogers Motorsport Peugeot 308.

“We’re relying on some of our competitors to have some average rounds like we’ve have so far, especially after the Phillip Island round,” D’Alberto said.

“If you took that out of it and we didn’t go to the back of the field for the weekend, you know, the whole thing could be in a very different position.”

Qualifying 1 for the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series takes place at 11:45 AEST Saturday August 12 at Queensland Raceway.