We shouldn't be at Ipswich

It clashes with the Olympics. I have friends who didn’t even realise we were racing this weekend and can’t believe they would schedule a round during the Olympic Games. 

No doubt we should have moved our recent mid-year break back to now and returned with the endurance races. Hopefully the weather stays fine and the crowds still come out.

While on the subject of the Olympics, I feel really sorry for James Magnussen, Emily Seebohm and Leisel Jones and the pressure they have been under to perform. 

The immense weight of expectation must be very distracting and you can’t help but forgive them if they are disappointed and break down emotionally.

Having won the three races at Ipswich last year and holding the record of nine wins at Queensland Raceway creates some pressure on me, but it’s nothing compared with the pressure on the Olympians.

If we get it wrong, we come back a few weeks later for another go. Olympians train for three-and-a-half years for the one event and they don’t get a second chance.

The pressure doesn’t really worry me. I view it as a compliment on our form. We have some momentum from the past couple of rounds and this round last year started my charge so I’m confident it can do the same for our championship campaign this year.

Our team is also confident after two recent tests at QR. We have the car balance right for the soft tyre and have a better insight into how hard to push it and how soon to start looking after it.

What will be critical this weekend is the change in track temperature. They are expecting zero degrees in the morning, but it will warm up to about 24 in the middle of the day for qualifying then cool down when we race in the late afternoon. 

We simulated those temperature changes on our test day last Friday and have a good understanding of how the temperature affects what you do to the car. However home ground knowledge hasn’t helped at this track in the past few years.

Maybe that’s because the home teams think they know what to do and relax a bit too much whereas the interstate teams seem to chase car set-up more aggressively and end up with the better package.

The ones to watch this weekend will be Stone Brothers and FPR who will come out punching, Tim Slade who was fast here last year, my teammate Jamie Whincup who is always quick at Ipswich and Garth Tander who has always done extremely well at QR. So there will be a number of teams and drivers we will have to keep our eyes on.

A few weeks ago I tipped the lap record to fall because the track has been resurfaced and is now much smoother. However, they had a supertruck meeting here a few weeks back and already some of the bumps are returning in turns one and two.

Thankfully turn three is still smooth. That’s a shame as you would think we would get a couple of years out of a freshly resurfaced track before it started to disintegrate. However, I still think someone will break John Bowe’s 1999 record this weekend - the longest-held qualifying record in V8 Supercar racing.