Jamie nearly set for fourth crown

He has a healthy 298-point lead over Frosty and just needs a consistent run at Winton this weekend to seal the deal. Seeing how competitive everyone is this season, it is really difficult to peg back points.

Even if Jamie has a DNF (did not finish) at any stage in the next four races all it will do is give Frosty and me a false glimmer of hope. There are not many times he’s had two bad races in the one weekend.

For me, it’s all about getting second place back from Frosty so the team can claim consecutive one-two finishes for the season. I’m pretty confident of being able to peg back the points at Winton this weekend. It’s always been a good hunting ground for me as it’s my old stomping ground.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve raced and tested there in all sorts of race cars. Hopefully that means I have some sort of home ground advantage. It’s another circuit that I enjoy. You don’t hit the high speeds of most other circuits and don’t even use top gear, but it’s a track I know extremely well in different categories so I’m hoping it will be a good round.

The format for this weekend is back to a mixed tyre round. We have to use hards and softs during both races - a  140km race on the Saturday and a 200km race on the Sunday. Hopefully we can get back on form after a couple of substandard rounds that have sabotaged our championship aspirations. It would be good to finish the year with some good results.

Then it’s on to Homebush where we had a fantastic round last year and almost got the championship. I’ve already got my eyes on the prize next year with the new race cars and the introduction of Nissan and Mercedes to the category. We tested our 2013 Car of the Future last week at Queensland Raceway and we’re well on track. 

I only did the first half of the day as I had to shoot off to Adelaide for a Clipsal promotion while Jamie did the rest. It was quite hot out there so the times weren’t fantastic but we made some progress with lots of things on the car. That was our second and last “manufacturers test day”. The next time we take it out it will be as part of our test bank for the 2013 season, so things are getting serious.