While Walkinshaw saved its best until last with a stunning Finals Series campaign last year, Tickford provided the ultimate example of peaking too early.
Spearhead Cam Waters dominated the opening round of 2025 in Sydney but failed to fire when it mattered, eliminated alongside teammate Thomas Randle in the Sandown Semi-Final.
Walkinshaw’s claim following last year’s title success that it had used the whole season as a test bed for Finals was met with some scepticism.
But Tickford team manager Matt Roberts freely admits his squad is already thinking about those crucial final three rounds across October and November.
“We’ve taken a different approach this year,” Roberts told Speedcafe.
“We heavily debriefed at the back end of last year and the early part of this year and we certainly changed our approach and our views have differed a bit.
“I would have liked to start a little better than we have, but we’re still strong, Cam is second in the points, it’s still a strong start.
“But we’ve certainly shifted our focus and hopefully at the back end of the year, we’re going to come home with a stronger package than we did last year.
“After Gold Coast last year, we certainly went into Sandown… we weren’t confident at all.
“So we want to turn that around this year and we’ll certainly shift our focus to being a lot stronger at the back end of the year.”
Tickford leads the teams’ championship after two rounds, thanks largely to consistency.
Waters is second in the drivers’ standings having finished inside the top six in all seven races to date, albeit with a pair of thirds as his best results.
Thomas Randle scored a first podium of the season with third in the Sunday race at Albert Park, but is 11th in points following a crash the day prior.
While admitting the Albert Park corner types do not carry much relevance to those in the Finals Series, Roberts said every race is part of the process.
“We know our strengths and weaknesses at the moment, we identified them [at Albert Park], and we used each race, each session for a test, basically,” said Roberts.
“I think we’ve got a good direction generally and I’m proud of the team, all the work that they’ve put in during the build-up to the start of the season.
“Obviously, Sydney, we executed, we just chipped away and had good, consistent results. It wasn’t super great, but overall, we did come away leading the teams’ points.
“And again [at Albert Park], consistency pays off, and we’ll gather momentum from that, and we’ll take it forward.”
This article first appeared on Speedcafe.com, a sister site to MotorRacing.com.