Goulburn’s Tom Toparis will be one man on a mission to make amends for his somewhat difficult third round, at Victoria’s Winton Motor Raceway on the last weekend of April.

The Cube Racing pilot scored a 7-9 result, which saw Toparis finish in seventh place overall, scoring twenty-six championship points.

“Winton was a really hard weekend for the team and me,” Toparis admitted to the Goulburn Post.

“My times were ok. However, the guys at the front were just so much faster than me and I simply didn’t have an answer for them, which was quite frustrating.”

With a few weeks to reflect on Winton, Toparis says he is ready to fire back up again and hopefully finish off the remaining four rounds with a ‘bang’!

“I just want to get back up the front of the field and battle for race wins like I did at Wakefield Park in March. I know I can do it, as the team and I proved that when we took out race one and finished in fourth in race two.”

Toparis knows the key to getting a good result at Hidden Valley Raceway will all depend on his qualifying position. This proved to be the biggest hurdle for the now seventeen-year-old who qualified in ninth place at Winton.

“Qualifying in ninth place did hinder us quite a lot at Winton,” said Toparis.

“That will be one area where we will be focusing on to make sure we don’t have a repeat like Winton. When you qualify badly, it just makes things a lot tougher come race time.”

As the series invades the top end, for most riders in the Australian Supersport category it will be uncharted waters as most of them have never raced around the 2.87km circuit.

In fact, only three riders in the top ten of the championship have raced at Hidden Valley, which include Mason Coote, Ryan Taylor and Chris Quinn.

Toparis is of course one of the many riders who has never raced around Hidden Valley Raceway. Toparis explained that he has been studying the circuit quite a bit by watching You Tube clips and even watched the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship round last weekend which was racing at Hidden Valley.

“Hidden Valley will be a whole new ball game for most of us in a few weeks’ time, purely because of the extreme temperature up there

We have not really had any hot weather so far this year, so it’s going to be a real challenge for everyone I believe.”

Toparis has admitted his excitement about racing on a new circuit for the first time. He explained that the circuit looks like an “awesome track!”

“Everyone who I have spoken to says the track is a lot of fun to ride on. More importantly, I’m just hoping to have a good round and claw some more points back in the championship fight.”

With four rounds to go, which equals to be a total of eight races with a maximum 200-points up for grabs (plus one point for pole position), Toparis is in a good position in terms of the championship standings.

The young gun currently sits in fourth position, only 3.5-points off Mark Chiodo and twenty-points off round one winner, Coote, while championship leader, Ted Collins is forty-six points ahead of Toparis.

“The season so far has had its ups and downs. I’m disappointed that I have not scored more points and I feel that I have been robbed of a couple of points this season, which sucks. But that’s the way it goes,” said Toparis, who knows that his championship hopes is definitely not over by any means.

“Ted [Collins] may be out in front, but we are all chasing him and there are a lot of riders keen to win races, as am I.

It’s nothing to dramatic. All it will take is one mistake from either Ted or even Mason and it will all be back to level playing field,” concluded Toparis.