Clipsal

Hi Guys,

I'm looking forward to Clipsal more that I normally would. It's one of my favourite races the atmosphere is just awesome and normally the racing is pretty exciting too. But after SBR's form over in the UAE the whole team is pumped to carry on our momentum. I'm looking forward to it due to a few things, mainly my parent's are coming over for the race, well Dad for the racing but Mum I think definatly for the shopping! It's always cool having them over as normally they only get to about two or three races a year. One of them of
course being the ITM 400 in New Zealand.

I haven't had too much on the last few weeks. Although I did a day trip to Sydney to film and Eposode of V8XTRA. Jonothan Webb was also there and while he was doing his filming I got to sit in the control room and what goes on. It was pretty cool to see this side of it and I made the comment how busy the director was, he came back with the reply that this was nothing and I should see when the race is on live and he's got 10x more camera's to look after! Fair call. The episode goes to air the Saturday before the
500.

One of the positive's of not having much on the last few weeks I have been training really hard. Most mornings with our team trainer 'Bluey' myself and the other drivers spend about an hour doing a variety of things from running to weights to boxing for about an hour. In the afternoons I try to at least go for a swim or a run. Clipsal is by far the hardest race physically for all the drivers. I remember back in 2008 on the Saturday it was my first big single driver race and the coolsuit failed and I ran out of water really
early on and the only memory I had of the race was halfway through under safety car I was fumbling with the drink hose trying to suck some water through and I looked up and there was a car stopped in front of me and I plowed straight into the back of it! I had to be pulled from the car at the end of the race and I was pretty shaky! I'm interested to see how I go physically this year as it's the most effort I've put into my training preperation so hopefully it pays off!

We have got a test day coming up (March 3) which out at Queensland Raceway, it's going to be interesting to check out the track condition as I got emailed a photo while I was in New Zealand over the break and the whole place was a lake! But I've heard some report's that the track is good. As usual we've got some thing's to try for the test day so it will be interesting to see what improvements and tweaks the engineers have come up with. Some things work, some don't but this is why we go testing! Normally on a test day we will be on track about 8am and run untill about 5pm doing anything from 120-160 laps throughout the day. This sounds like a lot but when you have limited testing throughout the year these day's are normally scheduled and your testing stuff continuously throughtout the day. There's not point just pounding around!

After Clipsal I head up to Sydney for the night with SP Tools as they are releasing their new power tools range and then it's straight down to Melbourne for the Non-Championship GP races. This year though, we are having longer races and pitstop's along with a big prize for the winner! This is one of my favourite races it's pretty relaxed as our races are normally not till late afternoon and I really enjoy the track there!

Once again I have to thank Stone Brothers Racing, SP Tools, FORD and the SBR partners and supporters and I hope to see you down in Adelaide for the 500. Don't forget
to come say hello

SVG

Back in Business

Hi Everyone,

I'm pretty excited for this season. There are a few reasons for this but it's definitely not because I got bored over the Christmas holidays and had nothing to do, I raced some dirt track races, flew a helicopter, jumped out of a plane, took All Blacks for 'hot laps' in a diesel Ford Fiesta, and drove a mini from the bottom of New Zealand to the top (almost), and thats just for starters! 

We had a great season last year and all of us put a huge effort in, we ended up 6th overall for the series which is my best result. It's nothing to sneeze at but we all know that we can be much better than this. 

After the season was over we had a ride day at Calder Park, Melbourne and after that I flew back to NZ. I love going back home it's always fun to catch up with the family and friends and to just chill out. I tried to completely switch off from racing but I found this pretty hard to do! 

I attended some speedway races at western springs which is always a highlight. The best night being the 50 Lap midget race. In front of a full house the race went right down to the wire the last 5 laps the leaders were right at it and everybody was on their feet. The race actually ended as a dead heat! I had $5 on one of the winners so that made it a bit better too!

My trip over was extended as an opportunity to film an ad with FORD, the All Blacks and the new Fiesta model came up. It was based down at Ardmore Airfield which was not far from my parents place. There was a little circuit set up around a few cones which was about 30 seconds long. The first day it was just me driving and the presenter in the passengers seat talking about the car, let's just say he stumbled on his words a couple of times through the slalom part of the course! Haha. You would think that a Diesel 1.6 Fiesta would be quite slow but it actually was a good little car! Nice power and it handled pretty good too! The next day a few of the All Blacks came out and they did some driving too. A couple had potential. A couple. Nevertheless they were an awesome bunch of guys and it was a fun day. With a car full of them though our Fiesta seemed to be lacking a bit of power! After we had finished one of the guys from FORD had a new 335 supercharged FPV and let us take that for a spin. We weren't lacking any horsepower then! 

There was a lady we used to stay with in Invercargill when we raced down there. She had this little mini I always used to admire and I'd always wanted one. She always said whenever she had no use for the car she would give us a ring. So I flew down to Christchurch and hung out a few days with my mate Ian Ffitch and then we flew down to Invercargill together. It was good timing actually as a round of the summer series was on and we went and had a look at the track and caught up with a few people I hadn't seen for a while. The trip back to Christchurch was quite fun. I lost a couple of bets so I ended up doing a bit of pushing! I split the trip up over a few days and let's just say I spent a lot of time perfecting the art of slipstreaming and blowing water out of the coil leads! 

For my 21st birthday a couple of friends got together and brought me an old falcon and spray painted it up like my V8Supercar. It spent most of the night on the rev limiter! Someone then thought it was a good idea to turn it into a dirt tracker! So with help from a few buddies it got a roll cage, new exhaust, welded diff, a patch up on the spray paint and away we were racing! Mid January was the debut and would you believe it the car won it's first race in the 6cyl production class! But that was as good as it got. We had some electrical issues but some of the other drivers were quite speedy. Dad raced competitively in the mechanics race and my friend Simon Evans did ok in the rookies race! For my first win at the track I got a bucket of trough water tipped over me.(imagine this in V8Supercar!) Doing grass roots races like that is normally pretty fun! The races are on YouTube so you'll see them on there.

I had kept in contact regularly with Paul Forgie my engineer and the guys back in Australia so I was pretty excited about getting back over and getting prepared for the Eastern Creek test day and the first race. The test day was a public open day where all teams were present and it was free entry. It was a success as thousands of people turned up. It was also a good day for all 3 SBR cars as we were quite speedy. The #9 car ended up 3rd of the Hard tyre runners which was pretty positive. 

Looking forward to Abu Dahbi we are all looking forward to getting back in business. We had a good car there last year and I achieved my first podium. It's a soft tyre only race which is normally pretty exciting. And also a night race! Which is pretty cool and the cars look great under lights. The SP tools car has some special stuff on it so make sure you keep an eye out, but I'm sure it will stand out anyway! 

Thanks also to Stone Brothers Racing, SP Tools, FORD and the SBR partners and supporters for having faith in me again this year. I can't wait!

SVG