While Holden has dominated the winner’s circle, Ford and Volvo have started to hit their straps in the past two events with pole positions and race wins, so it will be “game on” at the newly surfaced North East Victorian venue.

Albury-based Brad Jones Racing topped the time sheets when the Victorian teams had their pre-season practice session there in February with new signing Tim Slade dominating. 

Another layer of asphalt has been laid since so the racing will be fast and unpredictable on the grippy new surface.

Team owner Brad Jones is focused on finding the qualifying pace that has eluded the team this year.

“Our qualifying results were quite good last year, but the cars evolve. We have a good race car but we don’t have a good qualifying car,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, they have a good turn of speed, the hard part is with the little time we get testing we spend a lot of time at race meetings trying things.

“We put our heads up into the top 10 frequently in qualifying but due to a couple of small things we aren’t there at the end.”

“We are more than capable of running in the top 10 and nothing’s changed, that’s definitely still the target.

“I feel our performance is probably similar to what the Holden Racing Team can produce but we are still developing stuff and moving forward with it so we can match the performance in qualifying that we do in the races.

“When the racing is so close together it doesn’t take much of an adjustment the right way, or wrong the way for that matter, to change your position.” 

Jones is resolute and confident about the rest of the season, saying drivers Jason Bright and Tim Slade can lift their way up the championship standings.

“We have more speed to come. We’re working hard to get on top of it,” he said.

“We’ve gone through pretty big changes adjusting to two new drivers this year, so it’s getting used to what they want and at the same time trying to move forward with development.

“We’ve certainly got some things to come on board as the year ticks by and I’m hopeful it will lift us up the order.”

Jones was unequivocal about Slade’s prospects as a future race and championship winner.

“Tim’s fast, we’ve had some great results in races but we haven’t been able to unlock qualifying with him yet, so that’s something we are working really hard because I think if we can put him a position where he can race forward like he does we will start seeing good results again,” he said.

The V8s hit the track on Friday for two one-hour practice sessions, with races on Saturday and Sunday.