Richo writes: VB 300, Barbagallo.

In the fifth of a regular series of views from Castrol Perkins V8 Supercar racer Steve Richards, the Kiwi looks back at round five of the 2003 Championship, at Barbagallo Raceway, Wanneroo.

''Following the great Winton result, the Castrol Perkins Motorsport team sat down to have a debrief on the weekend events. It was evident that the cars were lacking a little qualifying pace. We realized that to start to claw back some of the points to Championship leader, Jason Bright, we were going to have to start the weekend a little higher up the order. This type of meeting is a typical post race scenario, where the team and drivers get together and sort out the good and not so good points from the most recent race meeting and get some clear direction for what our objectives are for the up coming race meeting. The objectives arising from the Winton round were quite clear. Qualify higher.

''After some sensible, rational thoughts the Castrol Perkins Motorsport team came up with some possible suspension scenarios that made a lot of sense, to move the cars qualifying performance further up the order. The goal that I set was to qualify inside the top four at worst, for the Barbagallo round of the Championship.

''It was a really nice sight when after the first practice session on Friday, car 11 sat a top the timesheets and while everyone in the team recognized it was only early days in terms of the weekend, it was a confidence boost to see that the car was on the pace.

''Saturday is a full on day in WA. Due to the time delay, we squeeze one of the races in on Saturday afternoon, to satisfy Network tens broadcast times. The second practice session also went well. We were evaluating some different rear suspension settings and were happy to go with those for the qualifying session.

''Qualifying was a close call. After setting the tenth fastest time, oil was dropped on the circuit. This meant that the remainder of the session would be useless as the track had a liberal coating of oil from one end to the other. But we were very confident that the shootout would go to script, as the car was performing very well.

''The top ten lap was good enough for fourth, exactly to the team game plan and one spot ahead of Brighty.

''There was a format change to the Championship for Barbagallo. 3 x 100 km races on a track surface that eats up rear Dunlop's and spits them out. The Castrol Perkins team were confident that we had as good tyre consistency as anyone.

''Race 1 saw a great getaway up to second place. It was close and we held position until the pitstops. Only being pipped by the smallest margin in the pits saw car 11 drop back to 4th. That is where we would stay, finishing less than one second from first position. Murph won from Skaife and Ambrose.

''Race 2 was known for its amount of safety cars. Not as good a start saw me maintain fourth. On the second lap I passed Murph for third and headed out after Ambrose and Skaife. After a great dice we finished in third position.

''Race 3 was a little topsy turvy. I made a great getaway only to be boxed in by a slow starting Skaife. The first set of tyres were a little second hand and I made a little error, slipping off the track and dropping a couple of positions. After the stops the car was still miss behaving and I was working hard with my rear tyres to keep up with the guys in front. In the end we finished eighth but that was still good enough for third on the day, after Mark Skaife had some dramas in the last few laps.

''Still a great result all told. We also chopped into Brighty's lead by 35 points. Next round is Darwin's Hidden Valley and the debut of the new Perkins Engineering jewellery box, the VY Commodore, chassis 041. Can't wait.

''The team have put countless thousands of hours work into this car and it is simply the best V8 Supercar I have driven. We hope to do one more days testing with the car, to unlock a few more of its best kept secrets before Darwin.

''All the best.

''Richo.''