No rest for Triple 8

The boys at the workshops in Banyo have been madly building spare cars for us and the Supercheap guys over the past few weeks.  That could be more important then ever with us facing a potential weekend of carnage at our third street circuit in a row at Hamilton in New Zealand this weekend.

We don't have a spare Holden yet after putting all our time and effort into getting our two race cars up and running for this season. So it's vital we get these spares in place quick smart.

Obviously they won't be ready in time if there is any carnage here in Hamilton, so we'll have to take things a bit more cautiously than we have in the past.
Like all street circuits there is bound to be a lot of carnage.  Jamie almost destroyed his car here in qualifying a couple of years ago and I did some damage to my car last year in the back chicane.

Our strategy for this weekend therefore is simply to stay out of trouble.  The key to that will be qualifying.

On any street circuit you want to be in the top three rows as it's difficult to pass and being up the front keeps you out of the crash and bash of the first few laps in the middle and back of the pack.  Thankfully my qualifying has been better and more consistent this year.

We've only had two other goes at this circuit, but it's now in firmly in my mind and we have a great knowledge of what it takes to do a fast lap here.  There are a couple of sections of the track where I have struggled with mental attitude and car set-up such as in the back chicane, but I will try to rectify that this year.

We had a fairly good result in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago with a third overall thanks to a little bit of luck.  But mostly it was good because we made some big leaps forward in car set-up so we come here with a lot of confidence in our machinery and our strategies.

Street circuits are a lot more demanding on bumps, kerbs and changes in bitumen surfaces, so we will have to see if our new-found knowledge helps.  I'm also going into this round feeling well relaxed and wound down after the high-charged start to the year.

It's hard to believe that here we are in April and we've already had four rounds, although only three of them were for points.  Now we head into an absolutely crucial part of the year.

It will be intense over the next five rounds which are mostly only two weeks apart.  Straight after Hamilton we have two rounds at Ipswich and Winton with soft tyres for the whole round.

That will be a whole new ball game and will require totally new strategies for the teams.  From my understanding we will practice on the hard tyres and then switch to the softs for qualifying and racing. It will be interesting to see how the teams get their heads around that concept.

We had our only victory at Winton last year on a soft tyre, so hopefully we will be right there.  I think most of the fans are pretty excited about the soft tyre concept.

But last year we virtually had to nominate a race where we could win as the tyres wouldn't last for two races.  This year the whole meeting is run on soft tyres so every team has a level opportunity to race for victory on both days.

My prediction is the driver and the team that keeps out of trouble the most over the next five rounds will be leading when we go into our nine-week mid-season break in July and August.