IT remains to be seen whether Todd Hazelwood's Supercars season will progress beyond this weekend's Bathurst 500 so the Erebus Motorsport driver is determined to make the most of his opportunity.
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Hazelwood will fill in for defending Supercars champion Brodie Kostecki at this weekend's opening round of the championship at Mount Panorama, with the latter engaged in an ongoing dispute with the team.
It's a fortunate break for Hazelwood, who was left without a drive in the Supercars champion when he was unable to secure his return with the Blanchard Racing Team.
Hazelwood said there's a mixture of pressure and excitement ahead of his drive with the championship-winning crew.
"You've got to embrace that pressure. To have that expectation is a good thing, because that means your destiny is a good result if you can put it all together," he said.
"Pressure builds diamonds, so I say bring it on. For me it's quite exciting to be in a situation where you have a proven product.
"The team is unchanged as far as engineering and mechanics are concerned. We've got great stability on that side of things.
"It's a different mentality to what I'm used to in the last few years of the sport, but it's a good one. I'm excited for it."
Hazelwood made a reasonable start to his 2023 Supercars season, picking up three top 10 finishes across the opening three rounds, but struggled to build momentum into the back end of the season.
He wants to show what he can do behind the wheel of championship-winning machinery.
"To go from one of pit lane to go right up to the other is pretty inspiring," he said.
"We've come off the back off a really successful test day, so it's a shot of confidence to know that we've got all the tools and the ingredients to achieve the success we want.
"It's still early days. I'm just taking it one day at a time at the moment but those days are going like weeks, particularly the last month as I've been trying to immerse myself into this new team as much as possible."
The ongoing situation at Erebus led to their major sponsor pulling the pin this season.
Their new sponsor, TFH Hire, was revealed at Thursday morning's livery reveal at Mount Panorama.
It continues the company's alignment with Hazelwood, after it was announced earlier this month ago that they would be supporting his upcoming 2024 Australian Trans-Am Series campaign.
Hazelwood refused to speculate on what his future in the series looks like beyond the Bathurst 500 and said he remains fully focused on what he can achieve across this weekend's two races.
"It's obviously been a big month and a lot has been happening behind the scenes so we're taking it round by round at this stage," he said.
"I'm here at Bathurst to do the best job I can for the team. What happens after that we'll wait and see.
"It's great having the support of [TFH Hire managing director] Brett Thomas. We're involved with the Trans-Am program this year, which is really cool, and he's now thrown his support behind Supercars and Erebus Motorsport."
Alexander Grant
Part of the Western Advocate's sports desk in Bathurst.
Part of the Western Advocate's sports desk in Bathurst.
