The racing this week was frustrating, but the rest of the time I spent in the Top End was great. Off the track Mish and I had a great time, we celebrated my birthday and did some fishing; more on that later.

I qualified 22nd for the weekend, which actually wasn’t that bad. The qualifying was closer than it has been all year, and there was only 0.6 seconds between pole and me.  I actually felt I could have done better in a couple of parts of the track, but it wasn’t to be.

Through the whole weekend I had trouble with my tyres losing grip and costing me time. It would take about 15 laps for the problem to occur, but after that I would lose grip. We tried different things under brakes in race two, but ended up flat-spotting the tyres, and in race three nothing really changed.

It may have been a problem specific to Hidden Valley. I know that Simon Wills had similar issues, but they were not to the same extent as mine. All in all it was strange as the temperatures were not as high as expected; if they were higher we may have expected more tyre problems.

While I think it may have been circuit specific it may have also been a damper -related issue. When it comes to tyre life and disintegration there are usually three reasons: they are spring rate at the front or rear, tyre pressure or damper problems.

We were not running crazy tyre pressures or spring rates, so I would guess it was damper related. I will know for sure after a test session next week.

Obviously there was some more trouble at the weekend, and with fines being lifted for speaking out, the usual suspects came to the fore. Russell Ingall and Murph predictably came out swinging; they must have been itching to get the verbals in.

In defence of Will Davison, I don’t think calling him a moron was appropriate, given the skill he has shown in a short time; we all make mistakes, even the more experienced guys. There were incidents through turns 1-3 and at the hairpin in all races, and there is always some barging at the start.

While the round wasn’t a success, getting to race on my birthday was a great experience. The Darwin round has such a great atmosphere and all the guys stay up there after the round, and we usually run into each other.

We went to the Skycity Casino on Sunday night and watched the MotoGP. Then on Monday Mish and I went to Mission Island and explored the rock pools and waterfalls. It wasn’t really swimming weather with the water an un-seasonal 22 degrees, but we went in anyway and actually ran into Russ Ingall and his family t.

The theme seemed to be water and while we went to the Aquascene on the Tuesday and fed the countless fish, the highlight was our fishing trip yesterday. Although the boat was smaller than expected, it was no bigger than a tinny and full, we had fun with Mish snagging a lovely salmon. It was the only fish caught all day, and you can see her proudly displaying it in my MMS section.

We capped off the day and Darwin by watching a spectacular sunset, before heading home today, and back to some average weather.

Jonesy.

Couldn’t make the same pace in the races today as we had yesterday. We struggled to get good tyre life and after about 15 laps we lost severe amounts of

Our 2 hour session was ok today. We ended in 19th position. Very close in times from 10th to 20th. My car has quite good balance, looking forward to tomorrow.

I read today’s Motorsport eNews that Paul Radisich (former Team Kiwi Racing driver) was talking to BJR about driving at Sandown & Bathurst. It said that he’d been talking to Brad (Jones) as well as a few other teams, but tell the truth I hadn’t heard anything about it. Someone of Paul’s calibre would be [...]