It was a terrible round for me at Phillip Island, there’s no other way to describe it. It was looking good up until Sunday but then it all went to pieces. On Saturday things were shaping up well, we qualified sixth, which was good. It meant that I increased the team record from four to five top 10 qualifers in a row, and that’s obviously 100 percent with the new car.

In my Saturday race I didn’t get a very good start. I was really struggling off the line but managed to get myself up to sixth and passed Steve Richards. But unfortunately we came together in a bit of a touch so I guess that sort of evens the score from the past few races. He spun and I had to sort of wait for him to be out of the way but then another car came and grabbed that spot, so we stayed in sixth. But we were happy with that.

Come Sunday, I was all set to start my 100th race – and as it turned out I didn’t even get to drive the car! It was just very disappointing. Greg started the race and I was standing by to do my stint later. Unfortunately, about 12 laps into it, Greg radioed through that the engine felt off-song and had lost power. So he came into the pits and we checked the engine out. We weren’t sure what the problem was so he went out again But it turned out to be terminal, it was engine failure, so we had to pull the plug right then.

It was very frustrating for me as I haven’t raced for six weeks since the Winton round where I had a crash. I just wanted to get some race time under my belt before Bathurst and given that’s another four weeks away, it basically means that I’ll have been 10 weeks without racing. That impacts your race fitness and you can lose that sharpness, stuff you can’t train for. Plus, I didn’t get any points and we didn’t even get a chance to have a decent crack at the race in any way.

We’re having a debrief this week about what happened to the car, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the actual problem was. I’m sure the guys will sort it out and we’ll be all good for Bathurst.

Realistically speaking, this year has been off-track for a while now anyway but a good result at Bathurst would certainly put a smile on our face. The way we’ve been looking at this year for the past little while is that we’re building up to a championship year in 2009. There’s little else to be gained from this year other than working on things and getting stuff right so we can really challenge next year. Our speed and consistency are getting there and hopefully at Bathurst we can net the results and then continue that onto 2009.

We have a completely new team and a new style of cars, plus we’ve moved our workshop and base this year, so there’s so many things that have changed that it was always going to be a tough year.

For all our supporters and sponsors of course we really want to get something out of this year. Even if you don’t win the championship but come out of the year winning Bathurst, well then you have something big to show for your effort and it seems like you’ve had a good year. You win Bathurst and many other results are forgotten! Bathurst is an event where I have previously gone well so we are all looking forward to it with a degree of confidence.

Just on another note about my mate Andy Jones, who had a big roll at the weekend. It was a big crash but he came out of it pretty well. I spoke to him straight after it and he was gas-bagging to his team and chatting away so he was fine. It’s just a shame for him to go out that way. A point I want to make is that they shouldn’t still have tyre bundles as barriers like they do at Phillip Island. If there’s concrete barriers the cars slide along them. But the tyre bundle ones make the cars catch in them and cause rolls like Andy had.

But I’m just glad he is okay and will be back for Bathurst – as I will be and very keen to do well there.

PS. And don’t forget the auction of my stuff on tradingpost.com.au. The proceeds go to the McGrath Foundation so it’s all for a good cause. Check it out.

Not the way i wanted my 100th round to finish. I qual and finished 6th in my sprint race. Started 500k race from 9th, engine failed on lap 12 i didn’t do a lap