Dreams of winning my home race have been put on hold for another year but I’m   still hopeful that one day I will stand atop the podium in New Zealand.

I didn’t have the weekend and the bottom line is the car wasn’t fast enough, but there were other issues throughout the weekend which hurt the cause.

I actually headed over to New Zealand on the 9th of April to spend some time with the family in Nelson and had a great time catching up with everyone, before embarking on one huge week of media in the lead up to the Hamilton 400.

Needless to say the actual racing was not what I had hoped for. The first race was ok as we took a low risk strategy into the race and looked to climb through the field, and we did finishing tenth, which I felt was a good result.

We tried to do the same thing in the second race, but it wasn’t to be. When Jason Bargwanna hit the wall at turn seven and as I went to go down the inside collected me. There wasn’t anything I could do about the incident and it cost me five laps in the pits as the team worked furiously on fixing my steering.

Once again Jamie Whincup controlled the weekend for Triple Eight Racing and I don’t know when we will see a change to his dominance. Jamie is simply on another level right now and everyone else is playing catch up.

I actually shudder to think what it may be like mid season when the rest of the teams with the 888 package put it all together. At the moment it’s looking like a long season for all of us Holden drivers, unless we can find something in the cars.

So far Lee Holdsworth is doing very well to be ranked second in the championship for Garry Rogers Motorsport. Having said that, GRM were very quick early in the season last year as well, so I don’t know how much of a true indication of their true form it really is.

I was also very impressed with the efforts of his teammate Michael Caruso at the weekend, he has really come on and improved this year.

There were a couple of issues I was unhappy with over the weekend including why they once again had tyre bundles on the circuit. I was lucky not to roll the car after hitting them coming through the chicane.

Having rolled a car before at Pukekohe and Queensland I can’t understand why on earth they would still place drivers at risk, for what was a deterrent to kerb-hopping at the chicane. They penalised us for it at Clipsal, why not just do that again?

I have had a bit of a mixed reaction to the new qualifying system. In some respects it’s great. The qualifying is hectic and the fans certainly get more value for their money with the Sunday qualifying session.

Conversely I don’t think having it an hour before the race is a good idea. How do you fix any problems you may have with the car, especially if you hit a wall?

While I am having a crack at the new system I also think the 20 minutes is patently flawed, by that stage you only have one set of green tyres left and if you don’t get out before the session is red flagged, or are on a hot lap when it is red flagged, then you suffer like I did on Sunday morning.

The session is more about luck than it is who has the fastest car. If you’re unlucky you miss out, simple as that and it’s not a good system.

I actually thought the first qualifying system we used at Clipsal was fair and worked for everyone as it rewarded good and aggressive driving, but I guess V8 Supercar disagreed with me.

Anyway I caught a bit of the F1 coverage at the weekend and was pleased to see Mark Webber on the podium, although I will admit with his luck I was nervous for him in the last few laps.

It’s great to see new teams up on the podium and I can’t see Ferrari or McLaren really adapting until they have had time to try things with the cars once they are back in Europe. I think Brawn and Red Bull may well have to make hay while the sun shines and they are doing just that. The big guns have the money to catch up.

Although Red Bull and Brawn have the experience of Adrian Newey and Ross Brawn and I expect that to be a factor. Brawn knew they had a car in September last year and I do think they will continue to be competitive.

I’m back in Melbourne now and looking forward to taking the family to the Storm v Warriors match this weekend. I met Warriors’ captain Steve Price last weekend and he’s invited me out to the game, hopefully the boys can grab another win.

JR

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