Don't write me off just yet

Not just because it was wet and I was sliding around, but it was a case of crawling up in the points gap to my teammate Jamie Whincup, then sliding back down a little. I went from 194 points behind at the start of the weekend to about 152 behind after Saturday's race then 188 at the end of the weekend. But don't write me off for the championship just yet. The finale in Sydney next week is still going to be a nail biter.

My first task is to get under the 150-point gap on the Saturday and then we'll see what happens on the Sunday. I still remember last year's Sunday race where the top three crashed heavily and the championship came down to who could get their car fixed the fastest in the pits. The beauty is that I'm guaranteed second place no matter what happens now as I have a big enough lead over third place. 

Jamie and I haven't had very good runs at Homebush in the past so we will both keen to rectify that and finish on a positive with a podium finish.

At least I won't be giving away a weight penalty to Jamie with my moustache. That gets shaved off next Wednesday and I can't wait. Ok, so maybe it's not a weight penalty, but it has been a distraction.

Not that I can blame the mo for my disastrous qualifying last Saturday. It was the y worst qualifying result in my entire career. To be honest, at that point, I didn't think I had much hope and that my tilt at the championship was lost. I was very much down on myself but I sat down with my race engineer JJ (Jeromy Moore) and we calmly analysed the situation and tried to make sense of why we ended up where we did.

We came to a bit of a conclusion that there was a question mark over the tyres and my driving which induced some of the massive wheelspin. JJ and I are a good mix of characters. Nothing really phases either of us. We decided I had nothing to lose, so we went for an early pit strategy and got our heads down. I had to be patient in the race as I couldn't see anything in front because of the spray.

At times where we were aquaplaning on the main straight through pools and even rivers of water at more than 200km/h in fifth gear. That was pretty scary. Sandown will have to get a major resurfacing between now and next year's 500km race. At the moment the track surface is a patchwork of bitumen with different levels of grip and some of the patches give off more spray than others. It was a nightmare on that track in those conditions, but we managed to make the most of it with sensible driving, careful passing and an early pit strategy.

Sunday's conditions were like chalk and cheese.

My fourth qualifying position was ok, but I had a terrible start and got stuck behind Shane van Gisbergen. We did another early pit to leapfrog him, but later in the race I had to pay with a longer pit stop for extra fuel and got leapfrogged by Will Davison. The soft tyres were only good for about five laps and from then everyone drove very conservatively making it difficult to pass. It turned out to be a bit of a procession. I had a few lunges in the last few laps, but I just couldn't get the grip to make it stick, so I backed off. But there will be no backing off in Sydney next week.