THERE was a survey which ran in a Sydney Sunday newspaper last weekend which piqued a lot of interest in V8 Supercar land and not for all the right reasons.

Firstly there was a survey where driver’s had to vote on who they thought would win the championship this year.

The results were that 40.9 per cent of people thought I would win, 31.9 per cent went for Mark Winterbottom (Ford Performance Racing) and only 18.2 per cent went for the Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander.

What’s that all about?

I found that it was massively biased on our last round which I won at Sandown in early June.

Naturally people are going to go for the last person to win a round and the Tander thing just does not add up.

You know he’s currently second in the points and is last year’s champion but he had a less than average performance at Sandown.

You know the Holden Racing Team messed up at Sandown and they would know exactly what they did and they would have fixed it.

For as long as I can remember HRT have been right up there and that hasn’t changed so I don’t know how Garth can rate so lowly to win the championship in other driver’s minds.

So you can’t really read much into the survey results because they came fresh after our Team Vodafone win.

Another part of the survey was that James Courtney attracted the most votes for being the most over-rated driver at 26 per cent.

That headline screamed “Dancing Boy, sorry but you don’t rate.”

I thought it was uncalled for and very unfair to be stabbed like that.

Courtney has put together two podium results from the five rounds this year and is currently seventh on the points table.

He’s just getting slammed and he was gutted by the comments made in the survey.

But on the other hand that’s all part of being an elite sportsman and it comes with the thrill of it all.

You are on the frontline and that’s why we can justify our wage in a way.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Winterbottom, voted the second the most popular driver to win the championship, goes at the Hidden Valley round this weekend.

He is leading the championship for the first time following his second place at Sandown.

From my own experience I have found that leading the competition is harder than being the chaser.

It takes someone special to be able to lead the championship and maintain the advantage.

I’ve got to put my hand up and say that I haven’t handled being in that position (leading) the best in the past.

It’s hard to put it down to what the problem is although there is no doubt that it is a bit of a mind game.

In Darwin this weekend it’s going to be really, really interesting to see how Winterbottom handles it.

There is no doubt that Winterbottom will have extra pressure on his shoulders.

Leading the championship does that.

At the moment the championship is, in my opinion, the toughest it’s ever been.

Darwin is one of the best rounds of the year because of the people and the laidback nature.

On the subject of the Top End, I was interested to see that the AFL scheduled a round 14 match in Darwin last weekend between the high flying Western Bulldogs and Port Adelaide.

We always get a strong crowd to the V8 round at Hidden Valley and it would be interesting to see how the two sports would have gone with a co-promotion and run on the same weekend.

There is a big crossover of V8 and AFL fans so seeing how the two sports could work in with each other if they had the footy on the Saturday night of a race meeting is a bit of a tantalising thought.

On my reckoning it would be a boon for both sports in such a fantastic location like Darwin.

Food for thought.