Shell V-Power Racing Team driver Anton De Pasquale reflects on a challenging but productive Tasmania SuperSprint in the latest edition of his The Distiller column, presented by Dasher + Fisher, exclusively for Speedcafe.com.

Tassie was a funny old round for us in the #11 Shell V-Power Racing Team camp.

Qualifying is usually a strength of ours. But we just couldn’t quite get on the right side of the decisive tenth of a second, and that really does make all the difference at a track like Symmons Plains where the margins are so small.

Starting the three sprint races from 12th, eighth and fifth meant we had our work cut out for us.

As always, we did have Will and the #17 guys to lean on and overlay with, and obviously he was a bit quicker than me for most of the weekend.

But anyway, we were where we were and we just had to knuckle down in the races and maximise what we could. And that’s what we did.

Our race car was actually really good, it was just sort of a case of starting too far back to make the most of it – that’s why qualifying is so important in our game.

We made a lot of passes, ran aggressive strategies, and ultimately moved forward in every race to take finishes of sixth, fifth and third.

The Saturday race was probably the best race for me because we had to come all the back from 21st after an early run-in with Nick Percat, and having a good car that was kind to its tyres was crucial to doing that.

The way we were able to make the best out of a bad situation is probably what I’m most happy about.

And we still got to go home with a trophy, even if we made a small mistake in the last race which meant we lost second position to Will.

We’re second in the championship still and looking ahead to some tracks which probably suit our strengths a little bit more.

We don’t have long to wait until we’re next out on-track… and it’s a big one.

We all remember the Grand Prix in 2020, which probably still leaves a bad taste in your mouth as the event got cancelled and COVID became a reality.

Having Formula 1 come back to Albert Park is awesome and obviously with the hype around F1 at the moment, I think it’s going to be pretty hectic there so it should be a cool event.

Hopefully we can see Daniel Ricciardo go well.

For Supercars, I think the action is typically alright there and we’ll have the usual four short, sharp races.

The track has changed quite a lot – new surfaces and new corners and everything they’ve done – so getting your head around that quickest is probably the key to a good weekend.

Either way, I think there’s going to be a fair few corners which are flat out in an F1 car which in our heavy Supercar are not flat out.

Lastly, a note on hard racing as it seemed a hot topic in Tassie.

For me I wasn’t involved in too much and I haven’t watched back all of the action, but hard and fair racing is what we’re about.

Obviously you don’t want cars crashing each other out of the race, that’s never cool, but definitely we should be all for hard, fair racing and putting on a show as much as we can be.

No doubt there will be plenty of blokes getting their elbows out in just over a week’s time in Melbourne.

Thanks for your support and bring on the Grand Prix!

Anton