Pitstop misery

We will do a heap more practices between now and Phillip Island next week and we really want to be at our maximum for Bathurst.

It was a brutal day out at Queensland Raceway yesterday.

Not because we were trying to make the car go any faster, but because of all the pitstops we did. Lowndes and I have all the enduro bits and bolts ready to go on his car for Phillip Island and Bathurst and there is not much more we can do to it.

Instead, we spent our third test day of the year fine-tuning all the ergonomics in the car and practising driver changes for the endurance races. We're the same size, height and shape so there are no major changes needed, but the cars are getting harder and harder each year to get in and out of. There are more bars and safety precautions in the car these days which makes driver changes very difficult.

I've been stretching the hamstrings in preparation over the last couple of weeks. You need to be loose and flexible and almost do the splits just to get in and out. It's not so bad getting out of the car after a stint racing over the mountain because you are all warmed up and quite flexible.

But getting into the car is quite difficult. You land on a hard seat made of carbon composite, you hit your knees on the dashboard, scar your knuckles on something sharp and chip your helmet on the roll bar. So yesterday was a pretty brutal day physically for us just getting in and out of the car about 100 times. At the end of the day we were pretty bruised and battered.

We will do a heap more practices between now and Phillip Island next week and we really want to be at our maximum for Bathurst. All those areas where we whacked ourselves against something hard should be nicely callused by then.

And our team physiotherapist Chris Brady will be pretty busy. There's not much he can do about the bruises, but he will be working hard to keep us loose. It hasn't happened before but it is quite easy to get a cramp or strain a muscle doing a driver change and that would be a tragedy at the start of a driving stint.

Meanwhile, the crew also had a big day practising brake pad changes and tyre changes. We're all now getting pretty excited about the coming enduro season. You may have seen the ads for Bathurst with Lowndesy running. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of my three Bathurst wins and I have the trophies sitting at home to remind me. But Brocky was King of the Mountain and Lowndesy was his protege, so that's ok by me that they feature him in the promotions.

It's going to be a great few weeks for sport with the coming footy finals and then Bathurst. I'm a Hawthorn fan and my mate Will Davison is an Essendon fan and we played each other last week and the Bombers won so we're out. But I'm hoping my other favourite team, Storm, will do better in the finals. I love this time of year. It's always entertaining to watch champions doing what they do best.

And that's why I will do everything I can to get down to the Tweed this weekend to see the action in Rally Australia. Citroen driver Sebastian Loeb is leading the World Rally Championship and he is at his peak at the moment. Even if I only see him for two seconds as he goes past at Mach 1 it will be well worth the trip.