Round Two of the Fujitsu series was held at Wakefield Park in Goulburn, NSW. It was the last time that the V8 Supercars were going to be racing there and I wanted to leave with some good memories. Lots of people had mentioned that Wakefield was almost my home track but that is far from the truth. 2005 was the first and only time I had ever raced at the track and as some of you may remember, I didn’t leave with many good memories!! This was definitely something I wanted to change.

During practice we put on what we thought were good tyres to try and get a direction with set up. However, the tyres gave us the wrong feedback so going into qualifying we were taking a substantial guess with the set up.

Qualifying: Straight away I knew we still needed to go further with our set up but with limited laps and time we did the best we could which wasn’t good enough to nab the pole position. My fastest lap for the session was my final lap. We needed one more change to get the best out of the car but ran out of time so we would be starting the first race from position three.

Race 1: The car was marginally better from qualifying but we still didn’t have the outright pace to pass Steve Owen and take first position. I passed Grant Denyer on the first lap to sit in position two. After that, the race was fairly uneventful and I finished in second place. A good position but I would have much preferred to be at the front.

Race 2: The dreaded reverse grids!! In 2005, Race 2 was when my weekend ended due to a stalled car on the grid. Fortunately the rules have been adjusted since then and only the top 10 are reversed which meant I started the race from position nine. After a slow start, I started to pick off the cars in front of me one by one. The car was even better again from Race 1 and with five laps to go I had made my way to second position. I just had to catch Steve Owen however exiting turn one, as I changed back to third gear it jumped out and while trying to put it back into third I accidentally grabbed first gear instead which sent me off the track and into the kitty litter. This brought out the safety car so they could tow me out. I rejoined at the back of the field but was two laps down so unfortunately finished the race in last position.

Race 3: The starting position for the third race is determined over points not your finishing position from Race Two which meant I was starting from eleventh position. There was a huge accident on the first corner of the first lap which brought the red flag out and caused a total restart of the race. Due to the time taken to clear the accident, the race was reduced to 20 laps. On the restart I was unable to make up any positions but sat tight waiting for the opportunities to pass to arise. With some minor tweaks to the car between Race Two and Three, the car was the best it had been all weekend. By lap thirteen I had gained first position and with the car feeling really good I managed to get a new lap record and went on to win the race.

Overall I finished 5th for the weekend. Not a great result but not bad considering my bad result in the second race. I managed to grab 208 points for the round which has now moved me up to 12th in the Championship. This has put me in a tough position and it will be very difficult to win the Championship from here but then again it is Motorsport and anything can happen from here!! I will certainly be giving it my all and working hard to get closer to the front!

Thanks to those of you who made the trip to Goulburn and came and said hello.

The next round is at Sandown Raceway in Victoria on June 7-9.

Dean Canto