TODDtalks: Name change but game remains the same

G’day everyone. It’s been a hectic few weeks since I last updated you on the performance of the carsales.com.au Nissan Altima.

Even the name of the category has changed – from V8 Supercars to the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. The good news is that while ‘V8’ has been dropped from the title, there won’t be any shortage of V8 engines on the grid for years to come.

Our most recent outing was in the Perth SuperSprint at Barbagallo Raceway. This has traditionally been our weakest circuit, but the huge amount of work that we’ve done over the last few years at Nissan Motorsport really showed up there this time round.

In fact, it was shaping up to be one of our most successful weekends of the year. Finishing seventh on Saturday was a really positive result and it bumped me up a position in the championship to ninth.

I was understandably pretty keen to consolidate that on Sunday. But, as is the way in motorsport, that got a little bit tricky with a sticking throttle that speared me off the track a couple of times. So to finish the race and get points was probably not too bad a result in the end.

Annoyingly, I dropped back from ninth back to 11th in the championship, so there’s a little more work to do there.

But as a team we did a really good job overall in Western Australia. My brother Rick led the Sunday race and finished fifth in the Sengled Altima only 1.7 seconds behind the winner.

It was more evidence we are very close to the pace now. It’s just a case of having that weekend where we find that tiny little bit of performance and crack the podium. Easier said than done of course!

Speaking of challenges, we head to the Woodstock Winton SuperSprint in northern Victoria this weekend for the next round of the championship.

This is our test track and the site of Nissan Motorsport’s 2013 race win, so there is high expectation outside the team that we are going to have strong results.

That’s certainly our plan but with the circuit having been resurfaced this year it’s almost like going to a new track because it is so different. Almost everything you have developed and tweaked almost doesn’t apply now.

It used to be my least favourite circuit to drive at because you had to be so conservative and so precise to get a good lap time out of it. You just push that little but too hard, just lock a brake at the apex of one of the corners and that would ruin your lap. You almost had to drive at seven-tenths to be fast.

That has completely flipped the other way now. You can really manhandle the car around and there is enough grip there so you can drive the thing as hard as you can. And it sticks! So I have gone from not liking the place to it being one of my favourite places to drive round.

It is the biggest change you could ever make to a track. I think it is going to be a different ballgame with the racing and the car set-ups and everything, so it’s hard to predict what is going to happen.

But given how much these cars light up on a grippy surface then I reckon the racing is going to be pretty good. The braking and turn-in grip is so high it means you can have a dip and throw it into the corner with a half a chance of gathering it up and pressing on.

Rick brings up his 200th round start at Winton. Congratulations to him, although it's fair to say neither he or I really pay a lot of attention to the milestones. He has achieved a lot in his career and together we have worked hard – with a bunch of other people – to build our own racing business.

Speaking of careers, we announced recently that Porsche Carrera Cup star Matt Campbell would be joining me in the carsales.com.au Nissan Altima for the Pirtek Enduro Cup. Englishman Alex Buncombe wasn’t available to do all three endurance races this year, which gave Rick and I a chance to give a young up-and-comer a shot.

It’s something we are passionate about. We really would have liked to have brought a couple of youngsters through our cars already but the financial side of it has been a little bit tougher than what we would have liked. So finally, after quite a bit of work and years of trying to achieve it, we have got a young kid into one of our cars who has got an incredible amount of talent but hasn’t had that big break yet.

We tested Matt at Winton and were pleased with what we saw and it really cemented what he has been doing in his Porsche. So when you look at the enduro line-up at the moment in the country or globally, it is just as good an option for us to grab a guy who is experienced on the tracks rather than go for an international who has to learn them.

Signing up Matt also seemed to prompt some media speculation that I was considering retirement. But nothing could be further from the truth. Matt has aspirations to race internationally, so we will be happy if we can lock him in for the enduros for a few years. Maybe later we could stick him in a car full-time.

Me? I am loving my racing at the moment. The cars are getting better and better and we are fighting consistently for top 10 finishes in a year where the competition has never been tougher and the racing has been fantastic.

We should get more of that action at Winton this weekend. Make sure you drop in and say hi if you’re at the track.