When I think of the weekend the first word that pops into my head is “disaster”. From day one of practice very little was going right for me. Perhaps my car was just upset it was having its last run?

In fact, the only time the car held up well was in qualifying when I finished 11th. The first race was my only one of note and even that ended in despair when a likely 7th place finish was taken away from me thanks to a broken tailshaft and I was left watching the race – annoyed, while sitting on a bunch of tyres with cameras all focused on yours truly.

To make matters worse, I completed one lap of the second race before an oil line problem snared me and then in the final race, I ended up getting a puncture when tangling with Paul Morris. My front left tyre connected with his rear right and I then had to limp back to the pits once again.

Greg Murphy also had an interesting weekend which started when Jason Bright and Michael Caruso decided to put the big squeeze on him early in race one. Both of those guys were at fault for turning into ‘Murph’ as he held his line.

Greg was a passenger in all of that and he told me afterwards he was amazed the front of his car wasn’t in the shape of a wedge.

I actually saw the same thing happen in one of the Ute events but their drivers all kept it straight. Maybe ‘Brighty’ and Caruso could learn a thing or two from them.

I thought Jamie Whincup was the standout driver of the weekend. To go from starting race one from 22nd position to finishing the final event in 3rd was a huge effort and shows what a great driver Jamie is.

It also suggests his team made some horrible decisions with his car during qualifying, but made good decisions while the races unfolded.

I had a bit of fun before the weekend driving 400 tonne excavators, which are the size of a house, but if you really want to see boys playing with their toys you need to check out Todd and Rick Kelly’s shed.

I understand their shed got a run in Zoo Weekly this week and after seeing the photos if they are anything to go by, the place would be pretty impressive.

I’m looking forward to getting my new car at Sandown and hopefully we can sort out some of the reliability issues that have plagued us of late. Our test day with the car didn’t go as we would have liked and I can only have 20 laps in my car before Sandown to try and get it right.

That’s not a lot of time and Greg has had to give feedback while racing, which is difficult to do, hopefully when we both have the car we can iron out some of the gremlins and have a very competitive vehicle in the near future.

I didn’t see much of the F1 before I hopped on my late flight from Perth, but I did see Fischella’s accident and it’s safe to say he got it very wrong.

JR