Mark Winterbottom remains confident Prodrive will provide developments to close the gap to the front runners after admitting his car is yet to operate anywhere near its potential this year.
The 2015 Supercars champion has endured a difficult campaign dogged by inconsistency as the team continues to search for an optimum base set-up on the #5 Falcon FGX.
In a season punctuated by brake and engine issues in the early rounds, Winterbottom has scored just five top 10 finishes from the 12 races, leaving him 406 points adrift of the DJR Team Penske Ford of series leader Fabian Coulthard.
Winterbottom heads into this weekend’s Watpac Townsville 400 off the back of a particularly poor weekend for the entire team in Darwin, which left the former Bathurst 1000 winner languishing in the mid pack.
However, the 36-year-old is far from writing off his season with the Ford driver motivated by development items set to be introduced in the coming rounds.
“We haven’t had a good year and I don’t think the car has fired to its maximum or been near to it all year,” Winterbottom told Speedcfae.com.
“We are still sixth in the points and when you look at that it hasn’t been that bad.
“I’m not saying we are going to win the championship, but we are not going as bad and we can get back on track pretty quickly.
“The team has highlighted the areas we are working to improve which is good and they are not just sitting still.
“There is nothing wrong with the car. The FGX package is strong and we proved that in 2015.
“We need to catch DJR Team Penske and we have got stuff coming, which is going to help and a lot of that is in the pipeline, which we have just got to wait for.
“(Developments) come on in patches we might have something in a month and then something else in two months.
“You need things to be coming to give you motivation and hope which it is doing.”
Townsville has provided success for both Winterbottom and Prodrive, most notably during his championship year in 2015 when he picked up a double victory.
The form continued last year resulting in a pole position followed by two third place finishes.
After such a troublesome Darwin, he is hopeful the vastly different characteristics of Townsville will see the team bounce back.
“A completely different car (with regards to set up) will win the race at Townsville than it did at Darwin,” he said.
“Hopefully we can use the four cars better in Townsville and have a direction, hit it and go hard.
“Whether we can win or not I’m not sure. We haven’t looked like winning at the last couple of rounds but we haven’t been far away.
“We just need to make sure we stick to our strengths and not get drawn into doing things that our cars won’t accept.
“We had a good debrief after Darwin to work out what was weak and we have regrouped.”
Meanwhile, the team will celebrate a milestone of 200 Supercars rounds this weekend with Winterbottom’s team-mate Jason Bright chalking up 250 round starts.
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