It certainly wasn’t the best weekend I have had this season.

It was disappointing as we had a very quick car in all three practice sessions on the old tyres, but when we switched to green tyres we lacked the pace and grip of some of the other cars.

Even so we were only half a second from pole and in 24th, which wasn’t good enough.

Sixteen laps into the race Simon started to report the steering had become quite heavy, and when he pitted we just went down a lap. I got in the car and also found it to be incredibly heavy, but I was still getting good speed out of it.

While I was happy with the speed I wasn’t happy to receive blue flags, especially to let Nathan Pretty pass me. He was 150m further back down the road and I couldn’t believe when I was given a black flag and a drive-through penalty; he wasn’t close enough to pass and therefore I don’t believe I was holding him up.

After I did the drive-through I caught up and passed some of the back-markers, but the steering had become worse again and eventually we had to put the cue back in the rack, cut our losses and begin to prepare for Bathurst.

I will say this, I would have hated to drive in the days before power steering!

Next week we will have a test session at which we must work on our reliability and also our qualifying speed. There is no question we need to get the gremlins out of the car before Bathurst.

More congratulations to Matthew for winning the hot lap competition. I hope you enjoyed the ride. I think you did judging by the thumbs up you gave me. I can’t speak for Frosty and Steve Richards but I am sure they enjoyed meeting a big V8 fan as well.

Also hope you enjoyed beating me at slot car racing. I don’t take exception, all is fair when it comes to that, even if my car was off the track for two laps.

Mish got back in on Sunday and she loved KL, the heat, the shopping, and the shopping. I only saw her for half a day which is hard as she is back in Albury and I am still in Melbourne, so I can’t wait to get home.

In other news I was sad to hear of the death of Colin McRae and his son in a helicopter crash, it makes me wonder how safe choppers are.

I also couldn’t help but notice that in the F1 Alonso pushed Hamilton off the track early on. I think a storm may be brewing at McLaren Mercedes.

Jonesy