Change in fortune

I've had a lot of bad luck through the season.

But it all seemed to change when I got the Order of Australia Medal last week, then followed up with my first win of the year at Darwin.

And now I'm celebrating my 38th birthday on Thursday, so life's looking pretty good at the moment. Victory on the Sunday was sweet, but I almost think the fightback in Saturday's race was a little bit sweeter.

It's always satisfying when you are passing other drivers and I passed a heap over the course of the race. Michael Caruso did much the same thing on the Sunday when he jumped the start, stalled and then went to the back. The stewards didn't penalise him for the jumped start because they thought he'd penalised himself enough. Anyway, he also finished fourth.

The weekend didn't start too well for us when we had an issue with the ride height in qualifying which we didn't pick up until afterwards. We made a slight error in measuring the ride height so the front spoiler was hitting the ground quite heavily and unloading the front giving me a lot of understeer.

It was hard to explain until we found the issue with our figures. I suppose it's just one of the many niggling little problems that happen over the course of a race weekend with maintenance checks and everything that's going on. It wasn't the only problem we had but the one that affected me the most. These oversights keep us on our toes and we'll cover off that little issue in debriefing.

I started in 20th but with a good two-stop strategy we were able to turn it around to a respectable fourth. It nearly didn't turn out at all after we got turned around in the early stages by Michael Patrizi who I jokingly referred to over the radio as Riccardo Patrese the former F1 driver. There was a lot of carnage because a car had spun in front of us and I opted to go up the inside to avoid it all but got contact from behind which turned me around.

Michael copped a 38 point penalty. We spoke about it afterwards and there was no intention or malice involved, just an unfortunate racing incident. Anyway, it meant we opted for the two-stop strategy that ultimately delivered us a result. We came out of that knowing we had good car speed for Sunday so we were bristling with confidence and still with a fresh set of rubber on hand.

It highlights the importance of having fresh tyres for racing. We have a very limited amount of tyres for the weekend, so you have to choose when you run your best tyres. We could have put on a new set on the Saturday and got a podium by staying in front of Frosty, but we probably wouldn't have won, so we chose to keep them for a shot at the win the next day.

To cap off with a victory on the Sunday was also satisfying. We've had some good results, but it's been a long drought for us. We've been knocking on the door for a number of races but haven't quite managed it. I think it was almost the perfect weekend for me.