Pit queue could ruin win

I dread to think the whole championship result could come down to that this weekend at the finale in Sydney. I think it's time to go back to the old rule of closing the pits when there is a safety car on the track.

The problem is that if a safety car is deployed around your pit window, teams have no choice but to bring all their cars in at the same time. And that is likely to happen several times at Homebush where there are concrete barriers and little run-off.

If there is more than one competitive team car on the track at that time, the second team car just has to queue up behind their teammate and watch all their competitors go past them. I'd be really disappoitned if that determined the championship and so would the fans who want to see racing on the circuit not in the pits.

It hasn't just affected our team. I think James Coutrney was affected at Bathurst. It is a problem for any team that has more than one competitive car. Of course, I can get around the problem by making sure I'm in front of my teammate, Jamie Whincup, all weekend.

However, I could win both races and still lose the championship, so long as Jamie finishes in the top six. Saturday is crunch day for me. The whole season has come down to one race.

If I can't reduce the points gap to Jamie by 38 on Saturday it's all over for me. But this is what a championship is all about; pressure going into a race like this. You need to step up and perform.

Unfortunately I also need for Jamie to have some problems or issues. I think he's aware of the situation as well, so there's pressure there for both of us. The format is two 250km races on hard tres with qualifying both days and a top 10 shootout on the Saturday.

Neither of us has a good record at Homebush. It's a circuit we both enjoy but we haven't been able to get the best out of our cars and ourselves. I'll address that by working very hard on car set-up so that it responds well. Then it's a case of getting that one quick lap in to get to the front of the queue and avoid the carnage of a street circuit.

I believe the track layout, including tyre barriers and kerbs are the same as last year, but we are heading down to Sydney early this year to check things out. Earlier this year I suggested a Nascar Chase scenario where at some point in the season, the top 10 plus others within a certain points gap qualify for the championship chase with the points scrubbed back to zero.

It creates a lot more excitement and puts more teams into title contention. Now I see some of the other drivers have been talking about it because TeamVodafone has dominated the season and are set up for a one-two finish this weekend.

While some of that talk might be jealousy by other teams, I actually agree that it is a better format and something we need to look at to keep the excitemenet level high right to the bitter end.

If we had re-set the points at Bathurst, I don't think there would be much difference between Jamie and me, anyway. Maybe some of the others such as Mark Winterbottom would be a lot closer, though.