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Supercars squad BRT baffled by lack of pace

Blanchard Racing Team has been left baffled by the two-round slump in form seen in Perth and Winton.

Tim Slade, Blanchard Racing Team

Tim Slade, Blanchard Racing Team

Mark Horsburgh, Edge Photographics

The single-car squad made a promising start to the season, driver Tim Slade racking up six Top 10s from the first nine races.

However there have now been two tough rounds in a row, the squad struggling to tune its Tickford-built Mustang at either the Perth SuperNight or the Winton SuperSprint.

Slade's best result from those events was a 10th in the finale in Perth while he slumped to 20th in the last heat at Winton.

The lack of pace has left the crew baffled with set-up changes seemingly making little difference to the car's behaviour.

According to owner Tim Blanchard, the next step is a full investigation into what could be wrong with the car before heading to Darwin next month.

"We've had a tough two rounds, that's for sure," he told Motorsport.com.

"We haven't really got our finger on it, but we're going to a few rounds where we've been strong in the past, Darwin and Townsville.

"We'll go through a lot of the suff from the last two weekends and see if we can find some answers. I'm not sure where the problem is but we've definitely lost something. We need to look at the car and all that stuff.

"We've been able to show glimpses of pace at every round we've been to since we started the team and the last two events we've struggled all weekend.

"There is something not quite right, but we've got some pretty clever people in the team. They are racers so they are disappointed and frustrated. They won't leave anything untouched before we get to Darwin."

The silver lining for Blanchard at Winton was a hat-trick of wins in the Australian Formula Ford Series.

The 2007 Aussie FF champion, and regular historic FF competitors, made a comeback at national level as he looks to perhaps compete at the Walter Hayes Trophy in the UK.

It was a successful comeback, too, Blanchard qualifying second before clean sweeping all three race wins against the 22-car field.

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