Fabian Coulthard Hopes high for return to the podium at Perth

After Fabian Coulthard showed winning speed on soft tyres at Winton last month, hopes are high at Lockwood Racing for a positive result in round five of the V8 Supercar Championship at Perth's Barbagallo Raceway.

The soft tyre round in Perth comes after the team had difficulties setting up the car for the last hard tyre round at Pukekohe in New Zealand.

For Lockwood Racing's Fabian Coulthard, getting back on the soft tyres this weekend should pay dividends.

"We were fast on the soft tyre at Winton so hopefully we should be quick on the softs in Perth," he said.

Coulthard is looking forward to racing at the West Australian venue.

"Barbagallo is a good little track," he said.

"It looks relatively simple on paper but it's actually quite tough.

"The degradation is very bad which means the tyre life isn't great, which should make it interesting.

"I've had success there in Porsches and things like that in the past, we were unlucky last year with a puncture and the year before that something happened in the pits so we haven't had quite the luck that we need to stand on the podium," Coulthard said.

This weekend features three practice sessions, more than was allocated in New Zealand.

"We have a little bit more practice here, so hopefully that gives us a little bit of time to get on top of the car if we need to," Coulthard said.

"It'd be nice though if we can roll the car out of the truck pretty close and tune it from there."

Coulthard currently sits third in the Championship standings on 824 points, 117 behind Championship leader Mark Winterbottom and only 10 behind second placed Craig Lowndes.

Lockwood Racing