GROUND FINAL BOUND AFTER SUPERB SANDOWN SATURDAY

G’day guys,

What an amazing weekend as a whole for us as a team — and what a dream Saturday, to be in a front-row lockout with my little buddy Woody. He did just a fantastic job in qualifying to take pole. It really showed the speed that he’s got, and he’s pushing us along.

It was pretty special for Walkinshaw Andretti United too, as the last time the team had locked out the front row here at Sandown was 1999, so that was pretty cool history to be part of.

As for the race itself, to get the result with the win was amazing, but it wasn’t by just me. Woody was protecting me there from a fast-finishing Brown. it was really cool to get through Saturday and punch the ticket for the grand final knowing there was a bit of weather and a bit of chaos coming on Sunday.

Move forward to Sunday, I was really proud to start third and fourth with Woody considering the top 10 shootout was in a little bit scattered conditions, making it easy to throw it away. I started next to my buddy again — I feel like they must’ve built the cars side by side on the jigs at work, because they were setting basically the same times, which was pretty crazy.

I was running my own race at the start. We were probably a little bit compromised by some of the things we took into the race — there were definitely some positives with the car that we wanted to focus on to get ready for Adelaide, so that’s really cool.

I think I was second on the road and really wanted to pit, but unfortunately Ryan was stuck in the pits with a locked wheel nut. It was really sad for the whole team. I’m gutted for him because he pitted from fourth; we would’ve had two cars in the hunt, and in those conditions we’ve been able to be pretty good and pretty strong. I dropped a few positions as a result, and I really struggled to get the tyres to come up to temperature just when it was really wet. We started to get going but just gave up a lot of track position.

We took a really good gamble to go quite early on the slick, and that paid dividends — I think we came back out in third. Then unfortunately I barrelled it up at turn 4 — I turned in off the yellow line and stuck it in the fence. Luckily there wasn’t much damage. I got going. I don’t know what I was on the road — eighth or seventh; a bit of luck with some other boys fighting pretty hard out there — and brought it home fourth.

I’m still proud of the weekend. I’m going to use the little bit of a bad run on Sunday as extra fuel and motivation to come out swinging in Adelaide. No doubt we’ve got the car to try and do the job in the grand final, and we’ve got the team firing on all cylinders at the moment.

I’m looking forward to the opportunity at the last round to have a crack at the title.

See you in Adelaide!

Chaz