The Brisbane-based squad endured an uncharacteristic struggle at the New Zealand venue, where it had dominated the Sunday race 12 months earlier.

Will Brown and Broc Feeney both spent the weekend bouncing in and out of the top 10, only appearing to get a handle on their cars late on Sunday.

The rough run came as the team undertakes preliminary work on its Ford program and begins the process of handing over its GM homologation team (HT) reins to Team 18.

“We’re definitely not going to use that as an excuse, there’s no way,” Dutton told Speedcafe when asked if the workload had an impact.

“It’s a lot of extra work, of course it is.

“Being a HT has always been a lot of work and being a HT transferring to being another HT, helping another team transfer, looking at engine shop stuff, there’s a lot going on.

“But that didn’t affect our performance this weekend. We’re not about to make that excuse.”

Dutton said the closeness of the current field means any team that does not hit the setup sweet spot at any given track is punished severely.

“When you’re on the second ring of the bullseye and you’re not on the first ring, it makes it hard to engineer the car, it makes it hard to drive the car and therefore makes it hard to move forward in those little setup changes,” he said.

“Everyone has those stories because when it’s so tight, a little error, a little loss of speed, twitchiness if it’s hard to drive, is just punished so hard.”

While the team prides itself on turning up to the track with a well-sorted package, Dutton was pleased that the Red Bull Camaros were at least on the pace by the Sunday race.

Feeney and Brown finished seventh and eighth in the 200km encounter, despite a strategic and driver error in qualifying having limited them to just 20th and 12th on the grid respectively.

“I think in that last race we were on song,” he said.

“Broc in particular, but also car #1 (Brown). We did a super aggressive strategy on car #1 which limited its progress later in the race.

“But car #88, you heard [on the team radio] from early in the race, he’s like, ‘we’ve got something here boys, we’re on’.

“OK, it’s not great that you don’t get your driver that happy until the end of the weekend, but that’s the business and it’s not just us.

“Look at the inconsistency from (Cam) Waters, for example, who is the qualifying demon. It just shows you that this track is pretty finicky, and the window is so tight.”

Brown and Feeney ended up fifth and eighth respectively on weekend points, meaning the former extended his championship lead over Tickford driver Waters.