V8 Supercar battle will be close

Last year a few critics complained that TeamVodafone dominated and it was a two-horse race between my teammate Jamie Whincup and myself. But going by the first two rounds in Adelaide and Melbourne, it will definitely not be a two-horse race this time.

I still think we are the team to beat, but the Holdens won't have it all their own way this year with the Falcons of FPR and Stone Brothers really starting to show good speed.

For the fans, it's definitely a promising start to the season with about six cars vying for the championship. It's only early stages yet, but the way it is shaping up it is going to be a very tough season for us and we'll have to make sure we do all the little things right all the time.

The Australian Grand Prix weekend was disappointing for Jamie and me, but it wasn't a total disaster. Certainly it wasn't the result we were looking for in front of our sponsors. However, there are a few positives we can take away from the weekend.

The first is that we now have two reasonably straight cars to take to Tassie next weekend. The cars are on the transporter back to Brisbane where we will have only a little bit of work to do on them before turning them around and sending them off across Bass Strait.

Jamie's car needs a bit of TLC on the passenger's door after Saturday's accident, but that's about it. Another positive we can take from the weekend is that when we weren't having engine or brake troubles, we showed pretty good speed.

With our engine problems in the first race and the way each race determined the grid position for the next race, we were shuffled back in the pack with little hope of winning, so we turned our focus on testing.

Because it wasn't a championship points round and we get so few test days during the year, we had a good opportunity to trial a few things such as suspension settings. We've also come away with some useful data on soft tyre degradation.

It was the first time we have used the soft tyre this year and we learnt that if you are a bit kinder to the tyre when you first leave the pits, you can get more out of it. I'm not sure whether it cures, but it definitely lasts a lot longer with a three-quarter pace at the start, rather than trying to get 100 per cent out of it from the first lap.

That info will be important when we go to Tasmania next week. One thing my mentor Peter Brock taught me is to respect the history of our sport. So it's pleasing to me to see my old Betta Electrical Ford Falcon getting some TLC in our Brisbane workshops.

It's chassis number 10 and the first car I drove after joining the team in 2005. It's also the car Jamie and I drove to the first of our trifecta of wins at Bathurst from 2006. The car also has great sentimental value to our team boss, Roland Dane, and I believe he is rebuilding it with a plan to take it to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK in June.

I'd love to go to Goodwood and have a look at the classic cars, but to also drive the Betta car again would be fantastic. As we are starting to build the new race cars for next year's series, it's interesting to look back at the old Falcon and see how far we've come.

It still has the H-pattern gearbox and obviously everything was first class, but to see the development and progression since then is amazing.