THERE’S no getting around the fact that Townsville didn’t go to plan for the Blanchard Racing Team.

An incident-filled weekend saw James Golding lose crucial ground in the finals race, dropping from ninth to 11th in the points, while BRT itself was overtaken by Matt Stone Racing in the teams’ championship standings.

Having been a top 10 finisher in nine of the opening 13 races this season, Golding now finds himself on a run of nine consecutive results of 11th or worse.

The one positive takeaway for team owner Tim Blanchard was the return of car speed, after both Golding and Aaron Cameron had been worryingly off the pace last month at Hidden Valley.

“We had a pretty tough weekend in Darwin, and then coming here I was keen to understand if that was a one-off or a trend,” Blanchard told V8 Sleuth.

“We had a very poor weekend but we had elements where the car speed was back to where we had been earlier this year, where we had both cars in the Shootout (on Saturday).

“We’ve got nothing to show for the weekend, it’s pretty disappointing, but I think we had glimpses of the car speed we’ve had throughout the year.

“We have just got to do a better job, but the car speed showed Darwin was probably a one-off.

“This weekend was similar to Tassie where the speed was alright, we just didn’t execute well enough. I think we can go to the next few rounds knowing that if we do a good enough job then we should be competitive.”

Pic: Ross Gibb

As for the mission of getting Golding into finals, it’s now about stemming the bleeding to ensure he’s in a position to strike come enduro season when Richie Stanaway steps in as co-driver.

“There’s going to be big points hauls in the enduros and I think we’ve got one of the strongest combinations with Richie joining us for the enduros and going to Bathurst with two guys that are very strong around that track,” said Blanchard.

“So as long as we can stay in the hunt, the enduros are going to dictate it I think.”

Next up on the Supercars calendar is Perth, which has historically been BRT’s best circuit over the years.