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Anton De Pasquale says refining the set-up on his Holden ZB Commodore will be key in his bid for another Supercars win at the CoreStaff Darwin SuperSprint.
The Penrite Racing driver claimed his first Virgin Australia Supercars Championship win with the team in the first leg of the Darwin double-header, winning Race 13 of the season.
De Pasquale opted for an aggressive strategy that saw him use two sets of soft compound tyres while most of his rivals opted to run soft and hard tyres.
It ultimately meant he could be one of the quickest in that race, but in doing so, he chewed into his back of tyres.
Despite that, De Pasquale managed to qualify respectably inside the top 10 for the second race at Hidden Valley Raceway before finishing seventh.
However, with little in the way of tyre life left by the end of the weekend, De Pasquale faded to 23rd in the final outing.
The 24-year-old said he was buoyed by his race pace despite an aggressive tyre strategy.
“Even though we had a strategy advantage on the race we won, the pace that we had was pretty fast compared to what would have won the next day,” said De Pasquale.
“I think we backed that up by qualifying third on partially used rubber on Sunday, when everyone else had fresh new tyres, so it showed how good our car was.
“We were on the back foot but our car was still as fast as most people.”
De Pasquale said the team will take what it has learned from the first leg of the double-header and hope for some similarly strong results in the second instance.
New data restrictions mean teams cannot access the data logger until Monday following each event, which they can then pour over to search for gains.
De Pasquale said the second opportunity is welcomed; however, all teams will have the same opportunity to analyse data.
“Back to back racing is good,” he said.
“We get five days to analyze data, dissect all the information, understand it all and come back and do it all again.
“I think that is a massive advantage that everyone has so rolling back out onto the track I think most people will get a bit more out of the car.
“Our base is pretty good so just need to fine tune a few things and hopefully be somewhere up the front battling again this weekend.
“Everyone dreams about winning their first Supercars race and you always enter every race you compete in to win, so to get that one under my belt is really cool,” he added.
“Darwin has been a place that’s been really successful for us as a team overall, so to get the win up here is really fitting.
“We just seem to click up here and everything just seems to work. We’re feeling really good heading in for another crack.”
De Pasquale currently lies 12th in the drivers’ championship. Erebus Motorsport team-mate David Reynolds sits fifth.
Round 6 of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, the CoreStaff Darwin SuperSprint, takes place on August 22-23 at Hidden Valley Raceway.
