TODD Hazelwood hopes to take full advantage of the championship pressure attached to others at the pointy end of the Sandown 500 grid today.
Three of the five cars starting ahead of Hazelwood/Tim Blanchard’s CoolDrive Mustang are in the thick of a title fight (namely the Camaros led by Will Brown, Brodie Kostecki and Broc Feeney).
As for Hazelwood? He’s got very little to lose, entering today 20th in the points.
The 2017 Super2 champion oozed pride at a stellar Saturday showing where he was fifth in qualifying and sixth in the Top 10 Shootout, at a time when he is fighting for his career.
“It was a proud day for me,” he told V8 Sleuth.
“We put in a lot of hard work in the lead-up to this event, coming off the back of a successful test day. We didn’t roll out very strong but we knuckled down hard (on Friday night) and went through the data and implemented the things that we’ve learnt from the test day.
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“For me what was rewarding was to actually see those changes that we’ve tried and tested and we found good gains with come to life. That’s very satisfying.
“For us as a small team we’re trying to do our absolute best so to get inside the top 10 and make an appearance in the Shootout and back it up with a clean but solid lap in P6, I couldn’t be happier.
“I couldn’t be prouder for the team. They’re the ones that have worked their backsides off to get us here this weekend.”
Hazelwood is optimistic of converting his third-row grid slot into a good race result.
“Traditionally we have always found a way of unlocking good speed in the race,” he said.
“Unfortunately the thing that has hurt us in the past is qualifying, so for us to be a bit further up the grid than where we have been recently and knowing that we have a reasonably strong race car, Tim was pretty competitive in the co-driver session as well.
“So hopefully between the both of us, there’s a couple of wise heads, and there’s various levels of experience and expectations of the guys around us.
“Some guys are fighting for a championship, the pressure is on in different ways, whereas for us in some ways the pressure is off.
“We’re trying to do everything that we can to finish 2023 on a high. But very much aware of the fact it’s going to be a challenge. Obviously no compulsory pitstops, strategy is going to be massive, longer fuel drop, a high chance of going a lap down.
“There’s so many different variables that I don’t think we have seen before ever here at Sandown which is going to play a huge part.”
Race start is scheduled for 2:15pm AEST.
V8 Sleuth’s coverage of the 2023 Penrite Oil Sandown 500 is proudly presented by Biante – Fuel your passion with winning model cars. Visit Biante here to check out their range of model cars in a range of scales from 1:64 to 1:10.
