After our test day on Tuesday I feel re-energised and hopeful ahead of the Darwin round next weekend.

We really closed the gap to the competition during the day. To show how much, at the beginning of the day we were around one second behind Ford Performance Racing, but by the end of the day we were practically running equal lap times.

In the last hour of testing teams often run qualifying set ups and, having watched FPR set up their car with new tyres as if they were ready for a qualifying run, we were fairly confident they were doing this and the stopwatches had us producing similar times to theirs.

It was great reward for a day of hard work from Greg Murphy, myself and the rest of the team where we tried several things until we had improved the cars significantly.

While we did improve I would wager FPR will still have a slight edge on us, but in terms of the times we were putting down it was good to be able to go with one of the top teams.

As I said I am expecting us to have an improved result at Hidden Valley,a circuit I have always enjoyed driving.  I’m not saying we will win the round but I believe we will be very competitive.

The new cars really have it over the old Tasman machines. While my old car still has pace, hopping in it helped to highlight to me just how much easier to drive the new car is. It is smoother and nowhere near as ragged, which is what you want as a driver.

I’m still not impressed with the sequential gearbox and it seems every driver who has used a sequential shift in the past feels the same as me, but there is nothing we can do about it. I am still much more conscious when it comes to changing the gears in it than I was with the old ‘H’ Pattern.

The annual Driver’s Poll results are released this Sunday. I am not giving up the goss’ on who I voted for in each category but I am waiting with baited breath to read the results and and in whose favour they skew the statistics.

It’s always interesting to read what people think of you, but it’s usually the guys in the top teams who feature the most heavily as they tend to polarise the rest of the drivers in the field.

For my part I answered the survey from an objective perspective and aimed not to let personal preferences interfere with my selections.

I watched the French F1 race on the weekend and have to say Kimi Raikkonen was going to hose the field had his exhaust not have busted. His loss was Felipe Massa’s gain and the Brazilian now leads the Drivers’ Championship.

I thought it was a great effort from Jarno Trulli to get on the podium, although Heikki Kovalainen tried to sneak around the outside of him on the last corner. That has happened to Trulli before so I am sure he was glad to go across the line.

I was also impressed with the drive of Nelsinho Piquet Jr. He managed to go straight past Fernando Alonso when the latter went too hard into a corner and overshot it, allowing the young Brazilian to knock off his more illustrious teammate. He will need to keep performing at a high level to keep his drive though.

In an interesting aside to that, I have heard Piquet senior has been banned from the Renault garage. I wonder why that is or if anyone can tell me? My guess is he may have ruffled a few feathers.

Luckily for me my father prefers to stay in the background.

Last week was Char’s birthday and I managed to surprise her with a new Nikon Digital SLR with plenty of lenses. I think she was happy with the gift and it may have even matched my helicopter lessons. Char loves her photography but I don’t think she will be taking too many of me driving the car.

Char is also coming with me to Darwin next weekend, while Sienna stays with Char’s parents who have kindly agreed to mind their granddaughter.

I attended the opening of Telstra’s new T Life store in Melbourne today and recommend anyone who is in the area to check it out.

It’s not just a phone shop, rather more of an experience in technology and a concept store. They also help explain how you can use the technology you are purchasing or have purchased to your advantage.

The store also features the latest in technology including a 2D barcode, where you place your phone camera up to it, take a picture and it directs you to a website or a phone number, or even a movie. I thought that was pretty nifty.

I also got to meet a few athletes I hadn’t met before such as Luke Ball, Duncan Armstrong and Brooke Hanson as well as Matt Welsh.

I had to ask Matt how his neck was, as the last time I saw him was in a Go Kart race for Nova FM, where comedian Dave Hughes lost it and caused a chain of collisions where I hit Welsh in the back giving him a sore neck.

I’ll also be competing in my own version of the Olympics, ‘The Brighton Games’ next week representing New Zealand, but more on that later.

I’m looking forward to Darwin and make sure you check out my video about the budgets of the V8 teams.

JR

Well, I certainly caused a stir with my video section during Sandown and my comments regarding Craig Lowndes.
 
At the end of the day it was great to see so many comments and read some very entertaining banter on my blog.
 
I applaud the passion of V8 fans and everyone one of you who left your comments. [...]

My highlight of the weekend was qualifying. And that is just as disappointing as it sounds!
 
Anyway I will start from the beginning. The car was exceptionally good through qualifying and we were showing good pace to start in 10th position on the grid, but sadly, come race one, we began to have problems.
 
Basically the car [...]

I just got back from NZ where I was helping Holden to launch the new Astra.
 
As always I had a great time, but was caught out by some dodgy work by some editors when a quote from a radio interview was taken out of context. I made the comment and stand by it, but [...]