I’m back after a bit of a break from blogging during the summer but I will be posting regular updates like I did last year and 2008 promises to be a big year for Tasman Motorsport. We have a new sponsor, will be getting new cars on the track soon and Murph and I are looking for more success.

Before I get into the weekend at Clipsal I thought I would talk about my break.

Sienna is doing quite well she enjoys sleeping now which is good for Char and I and she is now getting her first tooth.

Her first Christmas came around and although she didn’t really know what was going on she seemed to enjoy getting her presents and watching everyone open theirs as well as playing with all the wrapping paper.

Char’s brother and his young family were over in December and for Christmas. My sister and her family were over from NZ in January as was a good friend of ours from the UK.

As you might be able to tell we spent most of our time entertaining and while it was good fun it feels like there hasn’t really been a break at all but I love my racing and as I said earlier am ready to take on 2008.

Clipsal proved to be a solid weekend for us and thankfully we avoided serious damage to our cars but also avoided really hot weather.

From a team point of view we were just trying to keep the cars clean and run in the top 10 which we did. The cars were a bit slower than we would have liked and while we are still racing the old cars we are looking to keep in the top 10 and by the Hamilton race in April both Greg and I should have our new machines.

I noticed a large amount of teams have picked up speed with the Commodores of Andrew Jones and Cam McConville being the big improvers.

The racing was fairly out of control at the weekend and I don’t know what got into James Courtney, but I do know he probably had the fastest car out there so he most likely cost himself a lot of points through the incidents he had.

I had some of my own too and I was probably lucky my tailshaft snapped in the warm up for race two rather than during the race.

It wasn’t an ideal start to Paul Dumbrell’s time at the HSV Dealer team. Paul is a good mate of mine and I’m sure it was just a blip on the radar as was his incident with his teammate Rick Kelly.

There was some big news with the announcement ten cars from the development series will compete at Bathurst. I understand the need and support the idea to bring up our young drivers to the level they want to go to, but at the same time you probably wouldn’t be happy if you got taken out by a youngster making an ambitious move.

On a more sombre  note my thoughts go out to the friends and family of Ashley Cooper who passed away today after his horrific crash at the weekend.

I had a huge accident at the same spot around five years ago and it makes me think how lucky I am.

As of tomorrow I am off to NZ for a sponsorship arrangement with Big Ben’s Pies and and then coming back to appear on Panelbeaters on Friday.

JR