Hazelwood’s learnings in 'terrible' weekend

Todd Hazelwood is digging deep to rebound from what proved to be his toughest round yet.

Hazelwood faltered to finishes of 23rd, 17th and 18th at the Pizza Hut Winton SuperSprint.

Early signs of pace broke through in Practice 2, but a slump to 23rd in the first 36-lap sprint was a disappointment.

Winton was a stark contrast to the first four rounds, after which Hazelwood found himself 10th in the championship.

Hazelwood dropped to 13th across the course of the Winton round.

"Terrible," Hazelwood said on the Cool Down Lap podcast when asked of his weekend.

"It was a really tough weekend for us, the toughest one of the year, unfortunately.

"We tried a lot of things on the car, and I think we made sense of it after qualifying on Sunday.

"But unfortunately when you qualify poorly it makes for a long day.

"It’s not the results that we want; we've come up with a string of consistent top 10 results for the whole year.

"Then to come here and be outside the top 15 all weekend sucked.

"But the boys worked hard and did a faultless job on the car, I can't fault them for that.

"We have just got to dig deep away from this weekend and regroup for the next one."

Hidden Valley Raceway was a successful venue for Matt Stone Racing in 2021.

Notably, former MSR driver Jake Kostecki raced from 11th to sixth in the first race. 

There are just three weeks until the Merlin Darwin Triple Crown; in that time, Hazelwood said the team will use its time wisely.

"We have test day planned for next Monday,” he said.

"It’s obviously a very important day for us to assess where we went wrong this weekend.

"It’s also to start planning for the future events that are coming up.

"We are going to some hot events now in Darwin and Townsville that I think the team and I have been very successful at in the past.

"We are keen to turn that form into some good results for the upcoming rounds and press on."

The 2022 season will resume in Darwin next month. Purchase your tickets now.