HE'S felt what is like to be leading a TCR race at Mount Panorama, but this weekend Bathurst driver Brad Shiels wants to experience his first podium in the series.
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Now in his second season steering the Royal Purple Racing Hyundai i30, Shiels heads to his home circuit sitting 12th in the championship.
It will be the third time he's raced a TCR round at the Mount, having done so as part of the Bathurst 6 Hour and Bathurst 1000 support programs last year.
Those rounds delivered the best results of his maiden TCR season - he actually led a race last December before puncturing - and it has Shiels excited about what is to come this weekend.
"It should be good, I'm looking forward to it. We've always done well at Bathurst in the TCR," he said.
"We're just hoping this new tyre on the car, hopefully we can get it set up right because we really didn't do a good job of that last time at Phillip Island. Hopefully we can get that sorted and be competitive.
"Every race you want to try and get on the podium and I came very close a few times last year, so I'll definitely be trying for that."
The three 30-minute races Shiels will contest are part of what has been a busy month already for the Bathurst driver.
He placed second outright at the World Time Attack Challengeat the start of April, then last weekend made his debut in the all-Porsche Carrera Cup Series.
Though his preparation for round one, held as part of the Australian Grand Prix program, was not ideal he managed to finish race four inside the top 10.
It was a solid drive as he started 13th on the grid and climbed to ninth in a race impacted by three safety car periods.
That added to a pair of 13ths and an 11th to have him sitting 11th overall in the championship.
"I was fairly happy, the field is really competitive obviously and we didn't do any testing at all leading up to the event," he said.
"We tried, but we were just so busy with the TCR and Time Attack and all the rain was happening, so we didn't get to test at all and pretty much all the other teams did heaps of testing. That didn't help us."
Now back behind the wheel of a TCR - Bathurst being the third round of that series - Shiels is hoping for a happy Easter.
"It's cool to drive at Mount Panorama any time really, but I've raced every Easter for a long time, probably eight years now I think, it's really cool," he said.
"Hopefully we can climb those overall standings, we'll just do as good as we can and see where we end up.
"I've certainly been doing enough driving lately."
Shiels will contest two races on Saturday - starting at 2.45pm and 5.10pm respectively - before a final test from 10.10am Sunday.
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