Take the good with the bad

That's kind of how my round went at Darwin last weekend. Don't get me wrong, because I'm delighted with the results. Any time you can peg back about 100 points on the leader or your teammate is always a great weekend. But the fact is it could have been better and it could also have been worse. Qualifying on Saturday was good with the car set-up working the tyre as best we could.

In the first Top 10 Shootout since Adelaide we didn't get the best out of the car and I was too cautious not to make any mistakes so we ended up seventh. The Saturday race was going to plan until we were disadvantaged with the queue-up in pit lane after the safety car. However, the carnage in the last restart definitely benefited us. I went into that first corner after the restart in ninth and came out fourth. There were a lot of mistakes made by a few drivers in that incident. We had four cars going into a two-car corner and none of the drivers was prepared to yield.

Sunday started with the short 20-minute qualifying session and we only had one set of green tyres left to put in a good lap. We managed that right at the end for a third position start. Our strategy was definitely the better one with Shane, Frosty and I all pitting at the same time for the soft tyres. Not taking anything away from Shane, but he was lucky with that safety car late in the race when I was leading with an eight-second gap.

That was a questionable decision to send out a safety car for the David Renyolds crash when he managed to drive back to pit lane without help. I suppose you can get dirty about it, but it's all part of motor racing and you have to take the good with the bad. I'm still delighted with two podiums and second on the series ladder.

Jamie is a little disappointed after having good car speed, but then suffering the race one carnage and having their strategy come undone in race two with the late safety car. Shane has now leapfrogged Rick Kelly into third and looks to be the real danger. He seems the most consistent at the moment and after his second win this year he's full of confidence.

Next up is Townsville in a couple of weeks which is the end of the first half of the championship. It's a great layout but it's a circuit where I've never had a good result. But the way the year is panning out maybe we can turn that around and go into the mid-year break full of confidence.