Mish and I had an awesome time at Wet’n’Wild with our mate Hoary who comes along every year. He has managed to turn a four-day race meeting into a two-week party, so good for him.

I was actually proud of my efforts this year, conquering my fear of heights and going on all the slides. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough to win our annual race down the timed slides. It was tied at 1-1-1 after three races, but Hoary won the final to take out the title for the second consecutive year. Perhaps it was based on ballast and I could protest.

Speaking of protests, it was good to see Lewis Hamilton ask McLaren to reconsider theirs because he didn’t want to win the championship in that fashion. My respect for him increased markedly after that moment.

In a way I wanted him to win and break all sorts of records, but it’s almost karmic that Ferrari won with Raikkonen who wasn’t a chance for most of the year. Ferrari kept their heads down while McLaren imploded and the drivers agued and Kimi won a well-deserved title.

I still can’t wait to see where Alonso goes. The current rumour is a driver swap between him and Kovalainen. I would like to see him swap with Heidfeld, but it’s unlikely given the two German teams are very competitive. It’s about as unlikely as Audi getting involved in F1 by buying Spyker, but stranger things have happened.

As I am writing this I notice I am going to have to coax Buddy out from under my bed. Mish has gone to Terrigal for work and to suss out some accommodation for our end-of-year road trip up the east coast, and when Buddy saw me packing my bag he started having a sook about us both going away. He gets good care while we’re away but I guess he is going to miss us.

The other downside about going to Bahrain is Mish isn’t coming with me which is a shame but can’t be helped.

We had a short time to turn around the cars once again, with our mechanics working overtime to get them right for Bahrain.

In fact it was a ridiculously short amount of time and I want to thank all the guys who worked so hard, but I also believe the race schedule needs to be looked at. A lot of people are working a lot of hours after Indy, and then having to travel to Bahrain pretty quickly and separated from their families, and it’s just not right.

I know plenty of people flew over on Sunday because of some interesting travel bookings. Many only need to fly out on Tuesday, so to miss extra time with your family shouldn’t happen.

Bahrain should be an interesting race. It’s a permanent circuit (something different after two street races) and I think we can do reasonably well. I am aiming for 15th in qualifying and looking to stay out of trouble early on before building on my race.

I would love for us to use the whole F1 circuit to incorporate all the bends, but it won’t happen because the track is built around the grandstands, and it would then take too long to get back to them. There is another option where we use the second circuit, but I would say that is an unlikely option.

I think Bahrain will grow into a great race but the circuit seems to favour teams with power who get the power down easily, at least it did last year. It could be different this year.

Looking forward to the international event - Jonesy

 
 
It wasn’t a good weekend on the track, but I have had worse, so all I want to do is take the positives out of the weekend, and a big one of those was the qualifying speed my car showed.
 
I was 17th after the first session, which meant I had a crack at the second [...]

I’ve been interested to read all the comments posted on my blog, especially from people who have a genuine interest in Team BOC.
 
At this point we are aware of what the problem was, but I can’t really comment on it due to a confidentiality agreement which we have with SBR.
 
In reference to a comment [...]

It was a very eventful Bathurst weekend for me and despite the high drama I loved it.
 
If you aren’t happy after racing V8s around Bathurst then there has to be something wrong with you!
 
Simon and I were having a very good weekend. The car was good from the time we took it off the truck [...]