This was my first trip to Canberra, not only to the kart track but also the city itself. We arrived on the Thursday night about 9pm and the place seemed to be dead... there were houses, apartments, dual lane roads but not a person or car to be seen - was kind of like something out of a zombie movie!

Headed to the track on the Friday morning nice and early to get set up and have the kart ready for first practice at 8am. A few of the CC Racing team including myself did a track walk as we had never been to the place before. It was a track walk I never forget for a variety of reasons - I don't think I really learnt anything about the track whatsoever but it was very amusing none the less.

I was a bit worried having never seen the track before that I wouldn't be up to pace by the time we got to qualifying but to the organisers credit we got 4 practice sessions in before qualifying. It was a busy morning. However when we put new tyres on for qualifying to my disappointment we went slower. A few changes to the kart and I was 10th overall - annoyed that I was 10th but also in a bit of disbelief that I was only 0.15 seconds from pole - crazy!

3 heat races were the order of the afternoon. We made steady progress starting 10th each time we made the kart better and better and by the end of the 3rd heat I was matching the times of the leaders. I netted 7th, 6th and 5th in the 3 heats respectively.

Once the points were added up I was to be starting 5th for the pre-final. However once we arrived to the track on the Saturday morning the clouds rolled in and dropped enough water on the track for wets. After my past experiences in the wet I was not very confident of moving forward in the pre final. I did the exact opposite to moving forward and dropped from 5th to 10th and I was extremely frustrated. With little hope of it drying out for the final we discussed ways to make it go in the wet. We make a number of changes and went out in the final starting from 10th. This time the track was very close to being slicks and about 1/3 of the field chose slicks. Wets were the right choice and the slick tyre drivers fell out of contention straight away. My kart felt better and I was making progress. I passed a few karts and for the last 8 laps or so (of the 30 lap final) I tried to find my way past Brad Wyatt. I was definitely faster but the tricky conditions and the limited passing spots on the track made it very difficult to get by unless he made a mistake. That never came and I had to settle for 6th place.

Was no where near the result I was after - there were big points up for grabs this weekend and the Pringle brothers didn't race so it was my real chance to get some points back on them for the Rotax Rankings but it wasn't to be. I'm just going to have to do it the hard way. I really need to start to get some results as I have not been on the podium once this year as of yet!