BigBlog

As usual the Driver’s Poll produced some interesting results including one which puts plenty of pressure on us as a team.

Yes, we at Sprint Gas Racing were mentioned in the “most likely to win Bathurst”. It’s a huge honour to be considered in that light, but does it ever put the pressure on us.

Having said that we were only beaten by 1.1 seconds last year at Bathurst when we were the first Holden home and the new car is going to be so much better than the old one by the time we get to Bathurst so I do rate us a chance, along with about six other teams.

However, at Bathurst luck plays a huge role as we have seen in the past and you need it on your side, otherwise you might hit a Kangaroo, have a tyre fly through your windscreen or have mechanical issues late in the race.

I thought some of the other survey results were interesting.

Team Kiwi being most disliked probably looked a bit strange on paper but, then again I can see the reasoning. They are one of two teams to switch manufacturer. Over the last few seasons they have had bad press in regards to the team being in financial trouble and they have had short-lived relationships with many teams including Garry Rogers Motorsport, Stone Brothers, FPR and Larry Perkins Racing. They are now affiliated with 888.

I didn’t vote that way and am grateful for the fact they gave me my start, but I can understand why others did.

As for drivers saying Mark Skaife should hang them up, well it’s a difficult situation to comment on and there are a few aspects to it.

Firstly I would like to say I don’t believe Mark should or needs to retire anytime soon. However for me to say he is as good a driver as he was in 2000, 2001 and 2002 when he was dominating the sport would be a lie.

Back then Mark had better equipment than most of the field but he was still beating his teammates. More recently Todd Kelly and now Garth Tander have regularly beaten him. It’s not a knock on Skaifey as I still believe he is better than half the drivers in the field, but he is no longer the dominating force he once was.

Anyway enough on that poll as my focus this week has to be on the race at Hidden Valley and I’m fairly confident ahead of the round.

Ideally I will qualify in the top ten and stay there throughout the weekend to collect a decent points haul. If the car shows the speed it did at the test day we would hope this won’t be a problem.

I really like the Hidden Valley circuit. I love the cornering and the long back straight, not to mention the awesome long radius hairpin which comes right back on itself. The hairpin allows you to corner for longer than most hairpins and helps to make the track unique.

I’m also a fan of passing on the last corner. It’s a really sneaky spot where you can get a run up the inside of people. For those who haven’t seen it, it is similar to the final corner at Sandown.

The downside to racing in Darwin is the heat and we will, as always, be running in cool suits. It’s not so much the 30 degree heat which is the problem, but more so the humidity. It really makes things difficult for us, not just in the cabin but also for the team.

The engines, oil and water  get hot so the engineers are always telling us to get out of the slipstream and get the car in some cool air, which can be difficult because you want to push hard but you can’t all the time.

This weekend will also see the debut of the new Dunlop tyres. Basically there was an ingredient in the old tyres which wasn’t great for the health of the guys making them, so Dunlop have changed one ingredient for another.

The new tyres were tested at a ride day after Phillip Island last year by Mark Skaife and Jamie Whincup. On that day they were pulling faster times than anyone and if the tyres are faster than the old ones that is even better for the sport.

As I mentioned last time I got involved in the M-news Olympics. I took out the bronze medal for New Zealand overall, but I did manage to win the remote control car race (it was the one I wanted). I went ok in the beach run, but awful on the bike as well as choking in the basketball, but that can happen.

For the record Tim Slade won the gold representing Britain while James Moffatt won the silver representing Canada. And in what I doubt is a sign of things to come in Beijing, Dean Canto finished last representing Australia.

Jase

After our test day on Tuesday I feel re-energised and hopeful ahead of the Darwin round next weekend.

We really closed the gap to the competition during the day. To show how much, at the beginning of the day we were around one second behind Ford Performance Racing, but by the end of the day we were practically running equal lap times.

In the last hour of testing teams often run qualifying set ups and, having watched FPR set up their car with new tyres as if they were ready for a qualifying run, we were fairly confident they were doing this and the stopwatches had us producing similar times to theirs.

It was great reward for a day of hard work from Greg Murphy, myself and the rest of the team where we tried several things until we had improved the cars significantly.

While we did improve I would wager FPR will still have a slight edge on us, but in terms of the times we were putting down it was good to be able to go with one of the top teams.

As I said I am expecting us to have an improved result at Hidden Valley,a circuit I have always enjoyed driving.  I’m not saying we will win the round but I believe we will be very competitive.

The new cars really have it over the old Tasman machines. While my old car still has pace, hopping in it helped to highlight to me just how much easier to drive the new car is. It is smoother and nowhere near as ragged, which is what you want as a driver.

I’m still not impressed with the sequential gearbox and it seems every driver who has used a sequential shift in the past feels the same as me, but there is nothing we can do about it. I am still much more conscious when it comes to changing the gears in it than I was with the old ‘H’ Pattern.

The annual Driver’s Poll results are released this Sunday. I am not giving up the goss’ on who I voted for in each category but I am waiting with baited breath to read the results and and in whose favour they skew the statistics.

It’s always interesting to read what people think of you, but it’s usually the guys in the top teams who feature the most heavily as they tend to polarise the rest of the drivers in the field.

For my part I answered the survey from an objective perspective and aimed not to let personal preferences interfere with my selections.

I watched the French F1 race on the weekend and have to say Kimi Raikkonen was going to hose the field had his exhaust not have busted. His loss was Felipe Massa’s gain and the Brazilian now leads the Drivers’ Championship.

I thought it was a great effort from Jarno Trulli to get on the podium, although Heikki Kovalainen tried to sneak around the outside of him on the last corner. That has happened to Trulli before so I am sure he was glad to go across the line.

I was also impressed with the drive of Nelsinho Piquet Jr. He managed to go straight past Fernando Alonso when the latter went too hard into a corner and overshot it, allowing the young Brazilian to knock off his more illustrious teammate. He will need to keep performing at a high level to keep his drive though.

In an interesting aside to that, I have heard Piquet senior has been banned from the Renault garage. I wonder why that is or if anyone can tell me? My guess is he may have ruffled a few feathers.

Luckily for me my father prefers to stay in the background.

Last week was Char’s birthday and I managed to surprise her with a new Nikon Digital SLR with plenty of lenses. I think she was happy with the gift and it may have even matched my helicopter lessons. Char loves her photography but I don’t think she will be taking too many of me driving the car.

Char is also coming with me to Darwin next weekend, while Sienna stays with Char’s parents who have kindly agreed to mind their granddaughter.

I attended the opening of Telstra’s new T Life store in Melbourne today and recommend anyone who is in the area to check it out.

It’s not just a phone shop, rather more of an experience in technology and a concept store. They also help explain how you can use the technology you are purchasing or have purchased to your advantage.

The store also features the latest in technology including a 2D barcode, where you place your phone camera up to it, take a picture and it directs you to a website or a phone number, or even a movie. I thought that was pretty nifty.

I also got to meet a few athletes I hadn’t met before such as Luke Ball, Duncan Armstrong and Brooke Hanson as well as Matt Welsh.

I had to ask Matt how his neck was, as the last time I saw him was in a Go Kart race for Nova FM, where comedian Dave Hughes lost it and caused a chain of collisions where I hit Welsh in the back giving him a sore neck.

I’ll also be competing in my own version of the Olympics, ‘The Brighton Games’ next week representing New Zealand, but more on that later.

I’m looking forward to Darwin and make sure you check out my video about the budgets of the V8 teams.

JR

Well, I certainly caused a stir with my video section during Sandown and my comments regarding Craig Lowndes.

At the end of the day it was great to see so many comments and read some very entertaining banter on my blog.

I applaud the passion of V8 fans and everyone one of you who left your comments. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion just as I am entitled to mine and I love to see passion coming through.

I do think what I said was misconstrued in a way though. It was never a personal attack on Craig. I like Craig as a person and think with him what you see is what you get which is why he has so many fans. I was merely giving my thoughts on what occasionally happens on the track.

Speaking of on the track, we have pushed out test day back to next Tuesday to give us a chance to work on more components and test on a day where many other teams will be at the track, which will give us a bit more information on where we are at with the car.

I went to Bendigo last night to do some public speaking for a Safeway group and it was a night I really enjoyed. I like getting the chance to share a story and generally don’t mind an audience.

I have had journalists comment that V8 drivers are often better talkers than those in other sports and I think it’s because we are doing media form a young age.

The Le Mans 24 hour race has been run and won by Audi but my interest was in the favourites Peugeot who ran a gallant second. Nicolas Minassian, who raced a Peugeot at Le Mans, is a former teammate of mine from my Team Dynamik days in 2003. I would have been very happy to see him win alongside his star-studded teammates Marc Gene and Jacques Villeneuve, but it wasn’t to be.

Speaking of former F1 drivers there was a story run this week regarding former Ferrari and Minardi driver Gianni Morbidelli wanting to have a crack at V8 Supercar. I’m not trying to shoot the guy down but he was only mildly successful in his F1 career and the rest of his career has been similar. At 40 years of age I don’t think he is the type of driver we need to attract to V8s.

If it was Michael Schumacher or Mika Hakkinen I would be all for it. Eddie Irvine would have me mildly excited but not a 40-year old driver who was not exactly a legend.

I would rather see the spot he is after go to a young kid who is rising through the ranks like Shane Van Gisbergen has.

I’m happy to say I have pre-sold a lot of JR merchandise and am very thankful for the support. My merchandise will be available from the Phillip Island round at the circuits and if you see me out there make sure you come get a signed Telstra autograph card!

Back at home it’s Char’s birthday tomorrow and Sienna is has just begun to crawl, so things are looking good.

JR

My highlight of the weekend was qualifying. And that is just as disappointing as it sounds!

Anyway I will start from the beginning. The car was exceptionally good through qualifying and we were showing good pace to start in 10th position on the grid, but sadly, come race one, we began to have problems.

Basically the car was generating a lot of wheel spin, so much so it was wearing out the tyres and I found myself struggling. Getting hit by Paul Morris didn’t help any and when I ran wide watching Paul Dumbrell I knew I was having a bad day at the office to drop to 18th.

Race two wasn’t any better. Last year in the wet at Sandown I had a very fast car. We were in the top two or three, but this year we had no pace in the wet and were struggling with the grip.

We then went on to make significant improvements to the car for the final race, improving the overall drive and the power of the new car. It wasn’t perfect but both Greg and I were able to show more pace.

I was just unfortunate I was caught up in a bit of a dogfight with Jason Bright, Andrew Jones and Rick Kelly.

I also had a bit of bad luck on the weekend with a wheel nut sticking and getting caught in the pits. The tyres are put on precisely and then tightened up on the grid with a pre-set torque wrench. Occasionally this causes problems when you pit and it did for me and Rick Kelly on the weekend.

Once again I was impressed with the effort Fabian Coulthard put in. He did a good job at Hamilton, was consistent in Perth and was consistent again over the weekend.

I also was impressed with Jamie Whincup again. Jamie is racing well in what is often the fastest car and if he can hold his form I believe the championship will come down to him and Garth Tander. I’m not writing Mark Winterbottom or Rick Kelly off, but those two are my tips.

I just finished shooting for V8 Extra today. Neil Cromptoon, Brad Jones and I take you on a tour of my new Sprint Gas racing car and explain the differences between this year’s and last year’s cars. So check it out at 1pm on Saturday on Channel 7.

Jase

Got in the top ten in qual. Ended up tenth! Thought the car was going to get better in the race but instead it got worse. Just had far too much wheel spin. 18th