2 days before we arrived to the nationals at Eastern Creek just West of Sydney most of the state was coated in dust. This was visible to us on the freeway on the way into town, everyones cars looked like they had been 4WDing and the sides of the roads were a weird shade of red. We expected the track was going to be in similar shape and when we arrived mid Wednesday afternoon that's exactly what some of the drivers told me it was like in the morning. Luckily they had been out and spent most of the day cleaning the track for me so i managed 1 practice session in the afternoon just to get an idea on the track and iron out any major issues with the kart.

The track is definitely a lot rougher now than what it was when I raced the Nationals in Clubman a couple of years ago. Eastern Creek is a very fast track and the bumps are right where you don't want them to be - in the middle of the corners where the kart is completely loaded. After completing 7 sessions of practice on the Friday was I completely knackered. Very sore in the ribs and neck. I figured an early night would help me out a bit. At the end of practice I felt I needed an extra 3 tenths to be setting the pace.

The 3 tenths I thought I needed proved to be correct because that was the margin I was off in qualifying. In the 2 qualifying sessions I was 7th and 9th fastest. But based on fastest laps overall I was only in 11th place – 3 tenths adrift of pole. We got 3 heat races on the Saturday afternoon. Starting 11th at an event like this things can get pretty messy as the drivers try and sort themselves out. I got caught up in the first heat in someone else's battle and ended up dropping about 5 places while I was running just inside the top 10. I recovered to finish 13th. Heats 2 and 3 I managed to keep out of trouble and I moved up to 7th and 8th in the 14 lap heats.

My heat race results were good enough to give me 7th place for the pre final. I felt that the kart was more competitive during racing that what I was in qualifying. I just didn't nail that one ultimate lap in qualifying to get me up the pointy end of the grid. I had a reasonable race in the pre final and moved myself up a row on the grid for the final starting out of P5.

One thing was I thought was great about the Nationals was before the start of the final they gridded us up on the track F1 style and the drivers got out of their karts and interviews were done with drivers by the TV and track commentators before you set off for the start of the race – this is something that should look really good on TV.

I got a great start in what was to be the first start as there was a red flag right at the end of the first lap. I was up to 4th and there was a sizable margin back to 5th place. I think that could have really set me up for a top result but the red flag is something nobody can control. So we gridded up again and had a 2nd go at it. This time I got a bad start and was pushed out and dropped back to about 8th place. I ran in 6th for most of the 28 lap final. I got extremely tired and sore about half way through and just hung on for the rest of the race. Todd Davey got turned around at turn 1 with a couple of laps to go so that elevated me up to 5th. In the closing couple of laps Craig Stauner challenged me for 5th place. I just managed to hold him off and bring it home in 5th place with a bit of a margin to 4th place.

It would have been nice to challenge in the front pack but starting 11th in the heats and having to push hard to get back to the pointy end for the main race meant that I had killed the tyres pretty much. Half way through the final they were just about gone. However, a top 5 result at the Nationals I am very happy with.

The meeting was run very well. It owned with the amount of track time we received. 2 qualifying sessions, 3 heats, a pre final and a 28 lap final plus the 7 sessions I did on the Friday coming to around 60 laps – and I didn't even do every session! Was definitely value for money compared to the NSW State Titles we did last year.