Firstly, I would like to apologise for the lack of posting in the last two weeks. My laptop had a melt down and it took some time to have it repaired. It’s all good now though!

Ok, on to Phillip Island. 

History will show that Phillip Island is a very savage circuit for tyre wear, especially on the right rear. With this in mind, our plan for the two hour session on the Friday was spent running on very used tyres for the entire two hours. Because the tyre drop off is so bad and each stint in the race was 40 laps long, it was going to put us in good shape come Sunday. The down side to what we did on Friday was that it didn’t make us look too clever on Saturday in qualifying as we hadn’t spent a lot of time chasing the speed over one lap.

Both Cameron and I had very good speed in our first stints in the race and we were quite racey. I got in the car on lap 42 and when the safety car came out to allow the Autobarn car to be retrieved on lap 78, we pitted for fuel and fresh tyres that would see me do a second stint through to the end of the race.

Two laps after the safety car pitted and we resumed racing, the heavens opened!

What looked to be a passing shower on the radar actually ended up being a very heavy downpour. Because we were fuelled to the end of the race, my engineering group decided to that we would stay on slicks and ride out the weather. I felt like I did a good job in the conditions when the circuit was at it’s wettest, especially considering that the windscreen wiper was not working.

Unfortunately though, having gotten through the worst of it and with a dry line starting to appear finally, I was passed by Tony D’Alberto who was on wets on the run up to the ‘hay shed’. As he passed me, I put the left side of my car just on the wet verge and the rear stepped out. From there I became a passenger on the wet grass and made contact with the tyre barrier before the car rolled over. Not the way I wanted it to end considering that we had very good speed all day!

I would like to say thankyou to all the people that took the time to send messages asking about my health, It is greatly appreciated.

I didn’t actually sustain any serious injuries from the incident which goes to show that all the work that V8Supercars and the teams do to make these cars as safe as possible is not in vain.

The repairs to the car have gone very well. It was stripped back to a bare chassis on the Monday night after Phillip Island and then sent down to WP on the Tuesday morning to have the chassis repaired. It was then brought back to BJR on the Friday at lunchtime! It has been very impressive how everyone at BJR and WP have turned the car around in such a short period of time.

The guys that work on the race cars put in tireless hours under these circumstances and never get the credit that they truly deserve. My hats off to them!

Because of the awesome work that these guys have done, our testing plans have not changed leading into Bathurst and we are testing on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to getting back in the car.

Michelle and Koby are still going very well. He is now nearly 12 weeks old and has grown so much in the first three months. He smiles away everyone morning when he wakes up and it is one of the coolest things that I have experienced. Michelle continues to blow me away with the total commitment that she shows to giving him lots of love and keeping him happy every single day. Mothering suits her well!

One last thing before I go.

I thought the GP in Singapore on the weekend was absolutely awesome!

We don’t get to see many modern day Formula 1 circuits like that one being introduced very often and I think that not only was the spectacle of racing under lights very cool, but the circuit has something very unique with the grandstand underpass section.

Take Care.

Jonesy.

We’re coming to the end of our big break and things are all basically now in full preparation for the next races at Phillip Island and Bathurst. I thought six weeks was a long time but it’s gone really quickly and in the past week Cameron and I have had a good test drive at [...]