I am now back in the home country, Australia, eating and drinking all the great Aussie delicacies that I can't get outside of this great place - meat pies, 'twisties' and Oysters Kilpatrick - and getting reacquainted with the other thing they have here and nowhere else - the Aussie V8 Supercar series.
This why I am home, to race for the Ford Performance Racing team, in a Ford Falcon, at Sandown and Bathurst. The last two years, I have driven for the Dick Johnson Racing, and had a great time with the guys there,, but this year I have switched to FPR, which is operated by the same Prodrive company that runs the Aston Martin sportscar programme I drive for in Europe. It simply made good sense to keep it in the family.
I arrived here early to do two days of testing at Philip Island and spend some time with the team. I arrived on the Sunday morning to be greeted by the teams PA, who took me to the factory for a seat fitting. On arrival, I was amazed to see the size of the facility - it looks like an
F1 building! Not quite, but close. It even has its own merchandise shop in the factory, which has customers all day every day buying the latest merchandise.
The V8 series is huge over here, and they have really got a great package. It makes you feel that you are missing out on the fun.
However, growth is only so good, and I'd like to say 'keep the good work up, but don't get ahead of yourselves'. I have seen this happen before, and it would be a shame to see the series burst its bubble. There is definitely a bubble going on at the moment, as the money in the series is big by Australian terms, but I just wonder how much this spending can sustain itself. The one thing on their side is that the development of the cars is limited, not like what I do in Europe. But all teams will spend whatever they have got in other areas, and you can see them doing that down here as well.
