Just touched down in Adelaide for round 1, I meant round 3 of the championship. To be honest it all feels normal from my end. Clipsal still feels like Clipsal although we started in the Middle East a few weeks ago.

It was a little chilly getting off the plane which I am not complaining about. I would love a nice cool weekend of racing. I remember almost dying here in 2007 when we copped 38 degrees on the Saturday. I backed off for 5 laps to catch my breath and then pushed on again with 3 laps to go. Hot or cold this is still the toughest event of the year and one that has given me the most reward. I regarded my battle with Will Davo and win here last year as my most memorable race of 2009. So memorable I am very hungry to do it again.

We have to be confident coming into the weekend. We won here last year and had a fantastic run in our new Holden’s in the Middle East. But at the same time we are fully aware of our challenges. Although our car was very fast on the ultra smooth Middle Eastern tracks, it may be a completely different story on the very bumpy streets of Adelaide. Our plan is to do what we normally do and work really closely with Lowndesy especially on Friday to try and find the right setup on the cars.

Since we spoke last time allot of activity has happened off track. You would have noticed the website was offline for a few hours while we make changes to the back end. You won’t see many changes at the moment but I am slowly putting plans into place to make the community better for it’s members. There has also been some long term negotiations finalised that unfortunately I can’t mention here. But I am confident that over time the end result will mean I am performing better as a racing driver. I know I can’t wait around and be lazy, I have to keep striving to be better otherwise my opposition will run me over.

So I feel I have recovered well from being away and feel fit and healthy ahead of another big weekend. I know most of you are wrapped we are back in oz and battling it out on home soil. I hope to see as many of you as possible out at the circuit. If you get a chance check out our new merchandise range, I think we have found another gear this year. Gee that almost rhymes!

Take it easy

Jamie

Now it’s almost here and it’s a great feeling knowing we are coming into the grand final with just 22 points to get. If you do the maths that means even if my mate Will (Davison) wins both races, I only need to get 28th position in one race to win the championship.

I’m fairly confident we can achieve that. It makes me especially proud of our team to have such a lead at this point in the series, considering what a topsy-turvy year it’s been with the unknown factor of the soft tyre rule, the changes that happened with the different format at Indy and then not going to Bahrain.

It seems they have thrown everything at us this year to disrupt our planning and make it difficult to run away with a points lead, yet we’ve managed to do it all the same.

While my first focus is to get those 22 points, the second item on the agenda is to get a win in Sydney because it’s going to be such an amazing event.

It’s the grand final of a truly national championship. My third agenda item for the weekend is the team championship. You would have thought it a bit far-fetched that we could win both the driver and team championships before the Perth round two weeks ago.

We were so far behind in the points, but we did a perfect job at Perth with two pole positions and two wins so now we’re actually one point ahead of HRT with a chance of winning the prized pair of titles.

Of course, the unknown factor will be the track. No one has even walked around it yet and there’s no computer game to practise on, so everyone is in the same boat. I’ll have a good look at the layout and come up with an educated guess on the lines, then when I get on the track I’ll confirm or amend them.

After that there will be a lot of going over the track in my head to get it right. From what I’ve seen it looks like a good track for passing. There are several places where the track is wide which gives a good opportunity for passing, especially turn one at the end of the main straight.

However, I’ve been so busy with promotional activities this week I haven’t had much of a chance to study the track yet. One of those promotional activities was the launch of our team calendar to aid the McGrath Foundation. It was a Vodafone initiative, it’s all for a good cause and it was a bit of fun. Some of the photos are a bit racy, but I was fairly conservative. I tend to concentrate on being a racing driver rather than being a male model but I was happy to take part, even though I was definitely the most modest.

I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag when I say there was a fair bit of trick photography and trick lighting involved plus a fair bit of photoshopping afterwards.

It’s amazing what you can do with good lights. But I’d just like to say there was none of that with my pictorial.

That’s something I’ve now got to sort out if I want to be competitive right to the end of the season. Thankfully I still have time to turn it around. I can also take some comfort from the way I was able to recover from my own misfortune when I crashed at the end of the third race. Of course, I shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with.

But I didn’t need a session with the team psychologist to get my head straight for the last race. Once that helmet goes on I am immediately focussed. That crash was just a lapse in concentration. You have to remember that we are not just driving around out there; we’re on the limit every corner of every lap and you need to have 100 per cent concentration for the whole race.

The damage was almost had enough to finish me for the weekend, but our team did a fantastic job to get it right for the last race in very short time. Twelve guys replaced the whole front end and the rear including the watts linkage in just two hours and even managed to fill the drink bottle with water and ice.

In fact, all the teams did really well considering the amount of carnage, plus the hectic four-race format and the complicated strategies that required. Our crew did such a good job the car still handled just as well as it had all weekend. In fact, it was so good I managed to pass about 30 cars in that last race. I started in 23rd place and passed about six cars before the race restart where I was sent back to 23rd, then I got myself back up to sixth by the end. My race engineer told me “don’t come back unless you are in the top 10″, so I did.

I know Bargs had a go at me about my driving, but there is nothing to talk about in my pass on him. I don’t know why he turned across me. It was a textbook pass and the stewards and everyone in the pits saw it the same way.

What a crazy weekend, but what a great event even with the A1s pulling out. I thought the V8 Supercars put on a great show. There was plenty of carnage for the fans and three different winners in four races. It offered everything. What more could you want?

I don’t know what they will do for future Gold Coast events, but I agree with our team boss Roland (Dane) about the possibility of getting the
Formula 3 guys in before they head to Macau in November. I know the V8s would like to make it our own event. We want to be the number one category and be in control of our own destiny, but we also need some fantastic support categories. I’m sure F3 would be accepted without doubt. They are top-notch open-wheel cars and not particularly noisy. Most of the corporates don’t want the cars as noisy as the Indy cars or the A1s, but still the F3 cars are full-spec racers. It’s also one of the most competitive categories in the world.

Despite crowds being down because of the uncertainty of the event there was still that awesome Indy vibe and just thousands of people enjoying themselves with that carnival/party atmosphere. I’d hate to see the event lose that vibe.

And it’s important those people coming to the Nikon SuperGP realise that A1GP haven’t just decided to abort the Australian round. The result of them not coming here could almost put an end to that whole championship, they’re not just aborting this round.

In saying that, I’m so proud of Tony Cochrane and the V8 Supercar board. This weekend could’ve been a bit of a black mark for motorsport but the way Cocho and the board have pulled together Plan B to give fans double the amount of race starts and finishes, plus 50 per cent more racing for the V8s, is fantastic.

For the thousands of people who are there to watch the V8s and have a good time, it’s probably going to work out better.
But no, it’s probably not an advantage for me. Leading the championship the less rounds to go the better and the less racing you do the better. It could disadvantage the position I’m in.

But, on the flip side of the coin, it’s another opportunity to gain some more points on my position as well. If I do well. As a racing driver _ I’ve been vocal about this in the past _ I always want to do more racing and this weekend is an opportunity for another two more races to do this year, which is great.

I love Indy. The track itself has copped a bit of flak from time to time about being very tight, narrow and hard to pass. But I just have this completely different opinion of it _ I reckon it’s just one of the greatest tracks of all time. In qualifying, having new tyres on a V8 Supercar, out there brushing the mirrors in qualifying is one of the best sessions of the year. It’s unbelievable. Just barrowing this monster through a concrete canyon, there’s no greater feeling than when you get to the end of the lap and you’ve done a good time.

So for everyone who has tickets and is planning to come out to this Nikon SuperGP, don’t be scared of the changes. The party’s still going to be there, the V8s will be in full swing and I’m going to do everything I can to go back-to-back, run my own race and try to keep the surfboard trophy here in Queensland. We’re now into this high-speed run down to the championship finale at Sydney.

This is where it gets kind of hectic with a race every two weeks and for me it’s a little more hectic with the Race of Champions in Beijing after the SuperGP. But that’s not on my mind at the moment. My attention is focussed on one event at a time and right now that’s this great Gold Coast weekend of racing.

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It was the first time in a long time I had been able to finish the race and I was happy to get the chance to do that. As soon as I crossed the line I was straight on the radio to thank the guys in the pits. We battled very trying conditions all day and things just didn’t go our way the whole time. It was a big roller coaster. We were in contention from the start, then got the drive through penalty, so we dropped back, we had some ordinary wet pace, got back into contention, had some luck with a safety car, but couldn’t convert it. We had just too many mistakes.

HRT won the race like we did in the past three years with no errors. In the past we had won the race when we weren’t the quickest, but we also didn’t have any issues.
This time there were four or five issues that set us back. You can bounce back from two or three, but not five. I think the black flag for the dangerous pit release was fair enough. We released the car and FPR had to jump on the brakes to get out of the way, even though there was no contact. All pit lane rules are for safety. The last thing we want is contact and mechanics in danger.

It wasn’t ideal, but I knew there was a long way to go and that we could get back there. I had my first race laps in the wet and dropped back because the tyre pressures were too low. I couldn’t turn the car in the corners and I was just getting passed in the straights. It was wheel spinning in a straight line and I couldn’t get grip to use full throttle. It was frustrating, but my main focus was not to throw it away. In those tough slippery conditions I could easily have speared off the track and ended the day.

At the end, it was a fantastic duel. There was a bunch of cars in contention and swapping places right to the chequered flag. Kelly was holding up a bunch of cars, but they had track position and they were within their right to defend their line. They had an issue with their car and were doing the best they could with what they had. I was getting frustrated behind Bargs (Jason Bargwanna) and made a last-corner dive which I felt was safe. The main issue is Bargs moved under brakes and the car getting passed isn’t supposed to do that. I’m happy with my move, but I can understand Bargs being disappointed as he’s been working hard to get back into the series.

But I’m not a charity either. I had a few runs on Bargs and he shut the gate on me a few times. No one likes anyone being defensive like that so I did what I had to do. I saw him half go and tried to clip the front of him to straighten him up a bit but I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to spin and tried to straighten him up.

In the end I was very happy for my former housemate and good friend Davo (Will Davison) getting his first Bathurst win. I know what it feels like and I’d like to congratulate him and the HRT team for their flawless effort.

Now my attention is on Surfers Parade next weekend. It usually seems that whoever wins there goes on to get the championship and there are four of us now in contention, so it will be a thrilling ride to the finish in Sydney.

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From Bathurst, it’s a race every two weeks until the end of the year. One minute you are racing at Bathurst and the next thing you know you are sitting down for Christmas lunch with the family. It’s a gruelling schedule and a right royal battle all the way to the finish. So we have to get our fitness right before next weekend because we are pumping it for the rest of the year.

I suppose this will be pretty much what it will be like next year with the two condensed halves of the season with racing every fortnight and a nine-week break in the middle. I don’t do anything massively special in my training except to modify frequency to cope with the two or three driving stints we do at Bathurst. So instead of one training session a day we do several sessions a day to get used to switching on and off and recovering quickly.

Generally we have one big race per day, so we warm up, compete and cool down. The body gets used to that. Bathurst is more like a game of footy with two halves so you work hard, put in the big effort, then recover as quick as you can and then go back out there and put in again for the next half.

Speaking of footy, I’m really looking forward to the grand final this weekend. I’m originally from Melbourne so I’m a big Storm fan and I’m hoping they can make it two out of four. Going by their form of last week it’s looking good. I’ll probably catch up at the local with a few mates and watch the game as we did with the AFL final. It’s an amazing time of the year for sport with the footy finals and then Bathurst.

We did our final testing at Queensland Raceway on Monday. There were no issues that surfaced. It was all fairly routine. We weren’t trying to go for times or speed, we just ran in all our equipment for the race over about 10 laps to make sure everything is running well. Then we get everything crack tested and that goes in Saturday night for the big race on Sunday. We also did plenty of driver changes and pitstop practice.

It’s great news to hear that Casey Stoner is fit and ready to return to MotoGP this weekend in Portugal after his lay-off with a mystery illness. They say it’s chronic fatigue syndrome but no one knows for sure. I think he just needed a bit of a much-deserved rest. We went overseas quite young and has been pushing really hard for a long time. I can relate to that. I’ve been pushing hard since I started as a kid in karting. Every sportsman can knows that to stay at the elite level as he has it takes a lot of energy and mentally it’s extremely tough. I hope he will come back feeling refreshed, motivated and strong. He clearly is an awesome rider as no one has been able to handle that Ducati like he has. If his mind is in the right place he should be really competitive. I wish him luck and I’ll be glued to the TV at the weekend cheering him on.

I haven’t received anymore details about the Race of Champions in Beijing next month. All I know is we’re 100 per cent committed and ready to go. I get to drive a WRC car which should be fantastic plus a KTM buggy and some other great racing cars. It’ll be a great experience to race against some of the world’s best drivers. It’s something I’m looking forward to, but it will make that busy time of the year even busier.

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There isn’t a huge amount of difference between Phillip Island and Bathurst circuits as far as car set up is concerned. They are both high-speed circuits with a lot of grip so set-up is fairly similar, so we won’t be making major changes, just fine-tuning things. We had a quick car at Phillip Island so we are confident we will have a quick car for Bathurst. Our test day will also include a lot more pit stop and driver change practices. 

I know the Euro boys (Allan Simonsen of Denmark and James Thompson of England are driving the team’s 88 car) are champing at the bit to get to Bathurst and drive on the best circuit in Australia. So is Troy Bayliss. Unfortunately he didn’t get a chance to drive at Phillip Island after mechanical problems. The two-time World Superbikes champion is now retired from motorcycle racing and is loving his switch to cars. I’m sure he will be back at Bathurst and show his talents. He’s also looking to try to race a V8 more often next year.

It is disappointing to see that Queensland Raceway in Ipswich and Barbagallo in Perth are listed as provisional on next year’s calendar. But their facilities really do need some work. We need garages in pit lane instead of bunkers like we have in Perth and Ipswich. Every other circuit is designed to have the cars in pit lane, so why not them? There is also a lack of corporate facilities at these circuits and our sports relies on having first-class facilities for guests and sponsors. It’s like the AFL or NRL with their big grounds and corporate facilities. It makes the sport more professional. Fingers crossed they will both update their facilities because they are great circuits to drive on and the fans deserve to be entertained in quality surroundings.

There has also been some valid criticism of the season starting with a double-header in February in the Mid East. Naturally the Aussie fans don’t want to see the opener offshore. It’s not ideal but if you look at the grand scheme of things it makes sense to do the races together at that time of the year and get them over with. I’m one to speak my mind on all matters whether anyone disagrees or not and I’m the first to say if the wrong call has been made, but I think this is a fantastic improvement to the season. The organisers have made some big calls recently and got a lot of stuff done and they deserve some credit for the effort.

I’ve accepted to represent Australia in the Race of Champions being held in November in Beijing for the first time. What a great honour just to be invited as I will be racing against the world’s best in a variety of different cars and racing disciplines. Some of our competitors look like being Formula One drivers Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button as well as World Rally championship leader Mikko Hirvonen. I hope I can do Australia proud and I hope I can still put in a good performance in Phillip Island straight after. I hope I don’t come back jet-lagged. It’s a risk, but I’d also hate to have knocked back the invitation and look back later and wish I had done it.

Let me explain.

This weekend is a dual-driver endurance event with one driver referred to as driver A and the other as driver B. Driver A gets a 20-minute qualifying session to determine the starting order for their sprint race and driver B gets a separate 20-minute qualifying session for their separate sprint race. So that’s two sprint races with 75 points on offer from each race.

Now here is where it gets a little confusing because one of those races has to include a pit stop for at least two tyres. I’m not sure yet whether that will be Craig (Lowndes) or me doing the stop. It will depend on what is happening in the race. We have plans A, B, C and D for every contingency. Now it gets even more confusing because the results of the two sprint races are added together and that determines the grid position for the two-driver 500km endurance race on the Sunday which is worth 150 points for each winning driver.

So there is still 300 points on offer for the whole weekend just like there is in every round. I like the format, but I can understand it can be confusing for the fans.

Our cars have arrived down here and I’m finally happy with the ergos in Craig’s car which we will campaign for the two endurance rounds at Phillip Island this weekend and Bathurst in October.

I feel a bit guilty because I sent the engineers a long list of things I wanted change to make my job easier, but they’ve now been done and the car is all polished and set to go. The list included things like steering wheel adjustment, a button moved - silly little things which help us on the big day when things are all happening. You know, in the heat of the moment you want everything where you expect it to be so you don’t have to think about hitting the right button, you just do it by instinct or habit.

Which brings me to the 60 Minutes episode last weekend. I was fortunate to be invited back after the segment they did on me last year. This time I was invited to help out in an experiment to see how texting on a mobile phone while driving can affect your abilities. I was called in as a professional driver and they also had a rather new driver there and we had to go through a course while texting.

Although I’m a professional race driver and usually have to deal with making adjustments to roll bars and brakes, with an engineer in my ear and other cars and drivers all around me, trust me it was hard work trying to negotiate the course whilst texting on the phone. It was a real eye opener for me and, I’m sure, thousands of motorists.

As we predicted a few weeks ago, there will be an extra round next year bringing the series up to 16 rounds with an extra race in the Mid East. The full details will be revealed this weekend. I think that’s great. I’m a racer and I want to race cars, so the more events the better.

Instead, we spent our third test day of the year fine-tuning all the ergonomics in the car and practising driver changes for the endurance races. We’re the same size, height and shape so there are no major changes needed, but the cars are getting harder and harder each year to get in and out of.

There are more bars and safety precautions in the car these days which makes driver changes very difficult. I’ve been stretching the hamstrings in preparation over the last couple of weeks. You need to be loose and flexible and almost do the splits just to get in and out. It’s not so bad getting out of the car after a stint racing over the mountain because you are all warmed up and quite flexible. But getting into the car is quite difficult. You land on a hard seat made of carbon composite, you hit your knees on the dashboard, scar your knuckles on something sharp and chip your helmet on the roll bar.

So yesterday was a pretty brutal day physically for us just getting in and out of the car about 100 times. At the end of the day we were pretty bruised and battered.

We will do a heap more practices between now and Phillip Island next week and we really want to be at our maximum for Bathurst.

All those areas where we whacked ourselves against something hard should be nicely callused by then. And our team physiotherapist Chris Brady will be pretty busy. There’s not much he can do about the bruises, but he will be working hard to keep us loose. It hasn’t happened before but it is quite easy to get a cramp or strain a muscle doing a driver change and that would be a tragedy at the start of a driving stint.

Meanwhile, the crew also had a big day practising brake pad changes and tyre changes. We’re all now getting pretty excited about the coming enduro season. You may have seen the ads for Bathurst with Lowndesy running. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my three Bathurst wins and I have the trophies sitting at home to remind me. But Brocky was King of the Mountain and Lowndesy was his protege, so that’s ok by me that they feature him in the promotions.

It’s going to be a great few weeks for sport with the coming footy finals and then Bathurst. I’m a Hawthorn fan and my mate Will Davison is an Essendon fan and we played each other last week and the Bombers won so we’re out. But I’m hoping my other favourite team, Storm, will do better in the finals.

I love this time of year. It’s always entertaining to watch champions doing what they do best. And that’s why I will do everything I can to get down to the Tweed this weekend to see the action in Rally Australia. Citroen driver Sebastian Loeb is leading the World Rally Championship and he is at his peak at the moment. Even if I only see him for two seconds as he goes past at Mach 1 it will be well worth the trip.

Lowndes, who qualified sixth for today’s 65-Lap race, opted to start on his 12km old soft compound tyres and was into second place by the third lap. A move onto the standard control tyres on Lap 20 threatened to derail his podium opportunity with his #888 V8 Supercar suffering significant oversteer.

Strategy and two slick pitstops worked to his advantage and Lowndes was able to hold off a late charge by Russell Ingall to finish second behind Holden rival Will Davison.

“I am really happy with the results considering where we ended up yesterday,” Lowndes said.

“We had a strong car in the first stint but we will have to have a look at our second set of tyres as the car was quite unbalanced after the first pitstop.”

“The team did a great job during the pitstops and the car became balanced and consistent again once we went to our third set of tyres,” Lowndes explained.

Lowndes took 122 points from today’s race and has closed the gap to just one point behind Garth Tander in the championship standings.

It was a vastly different day for yesterday’s race winner Jamie Whincup who didn’t quite have the race he would have liked.

The reigning V8 Supercar Champion, who used his soft set of tyres in yesterday’s race, pit early and was then forced to take his second stop a lot earlier than planned to try and counteract his cars handling issues.

Whincup eventually finished the race in 13th position and said the team did what they could with the tyres they had.

“The last thing I want to do is harp on about the soft tyre but really, there were two races going on today,” Whincup said.

“We did a good job with the tyres we had left from yesterday and ultimately came out of the weekend with some good points.”

“The rivalry between ourselves and HRT has gotten stronger so I am looking forward to good honest battle at Phillip Island,” he concluded.

TeamVodafone will now shift their focus to preparing for the V8 Supercar Championship Series endurance races, the L&H 500 at Phillip Island and the Super Cheap Auto Bathurst 1000.

Top Ten Results - Race 16

1. Will Davison, 150pts
2. Craig Lowndes, 138pts
3. Russell Ingall, 129pts
4. Mark Winterbottom, 120pts
5. Paul Dumbrell, 111pts
6. Michael Caruso, 102pts
7. Steven Richards, 96pts
8. James Courtney, 90pts
9. Jason Bright, 84pts
10.Rick Kelly, 78pts
13. Jamie Whincup, 66pts

Top Ten Standings - 2009 V8 Supercar Championship

1. Jamie Whincup, 2007
2. Will Davison, 1824
3. Garth Tander, 1479
4. Craig Lowndes, 1478
5. Steven Johnson, 1374
6. Mark Winterbottom, 1332
7. Lee Holdsworth, 1269
8. Russell Ingall, 1187
9. James Courtney, 1154
10.Michael Caruso, 1134

There are a lot of race drivers, race teams and sponsors who get into this sport thinking it’s all about glitz, glamour and grid girls. They’re not in it for the right reasons and they usually don’t last. This sport is a passion, but it’s also a serious business proposition and you have to be in it for the long haul.

As for the SuperGP’s naming rights sponsor not being able to pay the bills, it just makes me realise how fantastic and genuine our sponsors are. That is hard to come by. It’s sad for our sport’s image, but I believe it won’t affect the event.

It’s also sad that Marcus has had to sever ties with Team IntaRacing because of a failed major sponsor. Unfortunately he let go of a very solid business partner for this year because his friend wanted to sponsor the whole team. He walked away from something that no doubt would have provided long-term security because a friend promised a lot more in the short term.

Now he’s been left out on a limb. He’s without a drive for the rest of the season at a time when most teams have already sorted out their endurance driver pairings. However, I’m sure he’ll get an enduro drive. He tested with a team last week, so I’m hopeful for him.
He’s a racer and I’m sure he will be involved for the rest of his life and will pull something together for next year.

Although most of the enduro teams have been announced, I’m hoping that a team might be able to find a spot for Troy Bayliss. The retired three-time World Superbike champ deserves a seat. He was really quick when he tested our car at QR recently and he would do a good job. Troy just needs a few more kays and a few more days in the seat and he will be well on the pace.

This weekend we are on our home ground but it’s certainly not been a happy hunting ground for us. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be strong here as we know this track and our cars have been quick everywhere else. We know the reasons for failing the past couple of years. Last year we weren’t technically on top of the new tyre and the year before we experimented with a radical set-up.

So this time we’ll go back to relative basics and treat it as just another weekend and another track. To my delight this is the second last round with the soft tyre. The only ’soft’ round left is Perth in November. With predicted 30-degree temperatures this weekend the soft tyre will have similar characteristics to Darwin where it didn’t last long at all.

That’s just great by me. Most likely we will start with it like everyone else. The quicker we can get it off the better. Then it’s heads down and some aggressive driving to turn around our bad QR karma.

Jamie Whincup and TeamVodafone Principal Roland Dane will be online this afternoon to answer questions you may have regarding today’s announcement.

Jamie will be available from 4pm-5pm, Roland will be available from 5pm-6pm.

Questions can be posted to the respective topics which will be created in the discussion area. Please observe the following guidelines:

ONE QUESTION ONLY per member. Additional questions will be deleted.

Read the previously-posted questions. Please do not repeat questions of a similar nature.

Abuse or disrepectful behaviour will not be tolerated. Members abusing this privilege will be banned on the spot.

Jamie and Roland will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible within this time.

It’s with great pleasure that I can let you know today that I have signed a new, three-year deal with TeamVodafone which will see me driving in the V8 Supercar Championship until the end of 2012.

After much thought about the direction I wanted my career to take, I could not be happier with my decision to stay in Australia and race with the team that took me to my first championship in what is undoubtedly the world’s most competitive touring car series.

The faith and loyalty that Roland and the team have shown me is extremely humbling and I am very grateful for this support.

The decision to sign this new deal was made even easier with the knowledge that I would be racing alongside Craig, and doing so with the invaluable backing of the team’s major sponsor, Vodafone.

I have built many incredible relationships within the team and with my personal sponsors, many of who have been there from the very beginning. The greatest of my racing achievements have been with this team and some of my most enjoyable memories have come from hanging out with the crew trackside.

The messages of encouragement from my fan base have also been amazing. In my opinion, V8 Supercar fans are some of the most passionate sporting supporters in Australia and it is a pleasure to go racing in front of them.

The championship is in great shape, most recently illustrated by a sensational first-run event at Townsville a few weeks ago. With similar events such as the Sydney street race also coming on to the calendar I am confident that the category has a lot to look forward to in the coming years.

I haven’t given up on my overseas ambitions and am looking forward to seeking opportunities for one-off events when the season schedule allows.

With this decision now made, I look forward to investing all of my time and effort into making this year and the years to come my best yet.

Check out this video of myself and Craig pledging our commitment to the team.

Jamie