A slow start to Saturday practice at the Pizza Hut Winton SuperSprint left the Shell V-Power Racing Team forever battling to get up to speed amid tight turnarounds on a hectic track schedule.

Its drivers noted the nature of the two-day SuperSprint format had exacerbated the early deficit, with Anton De Pasquale ending up as its best-placed Race 13 finisher in eighth.

With Winton Motor Raceway typically one of Triple Eight Race Engineering’s weaker circuits – the team having just one race win in the past seven events there – there was a very realistic possibility of a prompt change for the teams’ championship lead.

However, Dick Johnson Racing dropped 36 points by day’s end as Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney finished second and 10th, respectively, to now make for a 49-point difference at the top.

“We rolled out of the truck slightly off today and the two-day formats, unfortunately, don’t give you enough time to make changes when you’re chasing your tail,” said De Pasquale.

“We couldn’t maximise all we had out there.

“We’ll take a look at everything over and come back again tomorrow.”

Will Davison had his work cut out after a strategic gamble during qualifying backfired to leave him 13th on the grid, and the #17 driver could only recover to 11th after 36 laps of racing.

“It was a difficult day; we knew we would be up against it after not being here since 2019,” Davison said.

“We knew we needed to roll out of the truck fast with today’s format. Unfortunately, we didn’t, and we’ve been chasing the set-up all day.

“A few times during the day we made some improvements, obviously we had a bit of a strategy issue in qualifying, which halted us from progressing into Q3.

“We had a big swing at the set-up for the race and we definitely learnt some things and gained some valuable data. Overall, we weren’t anywhere near competitive enough in the race.

“The crew did an amazing pit stop once again this weekend. We’ve got lots of information to look at overnight and we’re focused on making changes for tomorrow’s two races.”

Supercars Championship action resumes tomorrow with Qualifying for Race 14 from 09:40 local time/AEST.