De Pasquale trails his Dick Johnson Racing teammate Will Davison by 110 points in the drivers’ championship after 16 races.
HEAD-TO-HEAD: Supercars teammates after Race 16
In Race 4 of the Supercars season, De Pasquale started sixth but failed to finish after wheel-to-wheel contact with Grove Racing’s Matt Payne.
De Pasquale was set to start Race 6 from seventh but failed to make the grid after suffering a suspension failure.
De Pasquale started Race 13 from seventh but got sandwiched between Matt Stone Racing Nick Percat and Brodie Kostecki of Erebus Motorsport out of turn two.
Although it’s easy to get bogged down in what-ifs, across those three non-finishes De Pasquale ceded 199 points on the assumption he finished where he started.
“We’ve had three very unlucky DNFs that are no fault of my own,” De Pasquale told Speedcafe.
“Other than that, we’ve had some pretty solid races.”
Davison leads De Pasquale in races 10-6. Discounting his two DNFs and one DNS, it’s 8-6.
In qualifying, De Pasquale has been the better driver of the two with a 9-7 split.
De Pasquale downplayed suggestions he wasn’t able to convert his qualifying into race results. Across 16 races, De Pasquale has made up places in five of them.
“Pretty much every trophy I’ve got in Gen3 is coming from further back,” said De Pasquale.
“I mean, you’ve got to qualify these things good at some point.
“Qualifying, you’ve got the new tyres and you’ve got to rag it. So you’ve got what you’ve got.
“Then the race, a lot of the time, places like here (Sydney Motorsport Park), car speed dictates it. You can’t do a lot if you’ve got no tyre life or whatever.”
On his most recent hit-out at Sydney Motorsport Park, the 28-year-old said he had a “solid” weekend, finishing fifth in Race 15 and 16.
De Pasquale only lost one place across both races.
“Two top fives is a good weekend generally in normal books,” he said.
“Tried a heap of stuff and tried to learn a bit more because when it comes to race pace. We’re just still lacking.
“Obviously, there are a few cars superior to the field at this stage, but we’re just trying to unlock what that is because it’s there somewhere, we’ve just gotta work out what it is.
“So that’s the main goal every weekend. I think we’ve learned some things this weekend.
“Two top fives, We had enough pace for like say fourth every day, but not enough for the podium.
“We want to fight for trophies every weekend, which is what we’re always doing. That’s always a goal.”
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