I was happy with the way I performed and the speed that the car showed at the weekend, though Winton may have been wet we now know that the car package we have has improved significantly and I was in with a chance in every race, before bad luck struck me down.

The race pace of the car was good, and I was very impressed with it particularly in the wet, but also during qualifying, even though we started from 19th on the grid we were only 0.1 of a second off 11th which is unusual for a circuit like Winton which has so many variables.

Race 1 signaled to me that I could really push into the points on the weekend, we had good speed in the wet and with 18 laps to go were third on the track, but a realistic leader on the road as Murph and Steve Richards were the only cars in front of me, but they both had to do make major stops.

The shunt from Canto resulted from Dean making an ambitious move which bent the diff on my car and put me out of the race.

We came back well in Race 2 and to finish in 10th after starting in 29th was a good effort.

We were on track for more points in Race 3 after being placed in 8th for much of the race but Murph, Lowndes, Ingall and myself were unlucky to hit mud, that Max Wilson brought on to the track and it sent me for a slide.

Nothing could be done and it wasn’t an incident that was Max’s fault either, it’s just racing. Max is actually one of the nicer guys on the circuit and is very fast and talented.

You don’t get to be a test driver for Williams without that! Max is very, very quick even when the car may not be up to it, and I always enjoy catching up with him after Indy, as he lives on the Gold Coast.

A lot of critcis might suggest that we only did well because we raced at our test track, but I would say that is 20% of the reason while the other 80% was having an improved package, and I would like to see the car continue to improve, to have us qualifying between 10-20 in most races and then moving through the field.

Right now I think top 5 is a little unrealistic.

The big news of the week was that Brad retired and it was a sad moment for me, but sadder for Brad, he just wanted to move on and held true to his word that he would hang it up when he felt it was the right time to go, and he did.

While I was looking forward to driving Bathurst with him later this year, mostly because we get along so well, I will now look forward to driving with my new team mate Simon Wills who is a very good driver in his own right.

We are looking to build for the future and are doing that. We had our team debrief yesterday and highlighted some areas we want to improve further on, but turning a team around is something I look at as a 12 month process, it won’t happen overnight.

I am looking forward to Eastern Creek on the long weekend, the Sydney fans are usually great and racing on the Monday might mean even more of the fans will come out to the track.

Andy Jones.

I want to make this an interesting blog and really give fans of V8 Supercar a chance to know what I think about all the goings on in V8 Supercar, and also how I think myself and Team BOC are going.
 
I’ll also let you know what’s happening off the track, and talk about my family [...]