Mark Winterbottom says he must focus on adjusting his driving style in Townsville this weekend as he strives to extract more from Prodrive’s FG X package.

Winterbottom heads to Townsville as the championship leader after a run that has seen six top two finishes in the last nine races.

The 34-year-old has however been edged for outright pace by team-mate Chaz Mostert in recent events, out-qualified by the youngster for eight of the last nine races.

Fellow Prodrive stablemate David Reynolds also had the edge on Winterbottom on Sunday at Hidden Valley, leaving the latter to focus on how he can improve his own performance.

“I think I have to change my driving style a little bit to suit the strength of the car so I’m going to focus on that through practice along with setup changes but definitely trying to change the way I drive the car a little bit so we’ll see how it goes,” said Winterbottom.

“If we can set the car up to how I like to drive it it’ll be fine but the way it is and its strengths sort of shows that I need to change a little bit so I’m trying to focus on that.”

Townsville looms as a major challenge for Winterbottom, who struggled at the venue last season, where he qualified outside the top 10 for all three races.

Street circuits in general are seen as the biggest threat to Winterbottom’s title charge after struggling compared to team-mate Mostert in Adelaide at the start of the season.

“Townsville’s a strange place,” Winterbottom continued.

“In 2013 I got pole by about three-tenths and we were clearly one of the quickest cars and then last year we had a qualifying average of 18th so year-on-year it can change so much.

“I’m not dwelling on last year’s results or getting carried away with the year before but I think our car is obviously showing that it’s quick and if I can drive it right and get the setup right we should have a good weekend.”

This weekend is Prodrive’s first running four FG Xs on a street circuit, having started the season with David Reynolds and Andre Heimgartner in FGs.