Right from the outset in Practice 1 on Friday, Aaron struggled with the speed and balance of the car, unable to post a competitive lap time, although a big improvement was found in time for qualifying later in the day.

"The rear of the car was a bit nervous. It would have been nice to have an extra practice session to dial that out, but we kept trying to work through it in the short time we had," Aaron detailed.

"Qualifying with new tyres on, I could feel the car had more grip and the more laps I did, the better the car felt.

"I thought I could go faster on my second set of new tyres, but the team and I decided to keep a fresh set of rubber for the races because there are no points for qualifying!"

The plan leading into Races 1 and 2 on Saturday was to push forward as much as possible, but if the results didn't come in Race 1 to put the new rubber on the car for the reverse grid Race 2 and try to maximize the point haul.

As it turned out, Race 1 did not go to plan, with Aaron finding himself stuck in the sand trap with 5 laps remaining after narrowly avoiding a start line incident.

"At the first start, I got off the line well, but the driver in front of me kept pushing me wider and wider until I had all four wheels on the grass!

"I was getting pretty fired up at him until we went flying past a stalled car and I understood he was trying to avoid an accident.

"Once I got around them and back on the track, I had Mark Howard (former team mate) come spearing across the front of me...and he didn't miss be by much!"

The race was red flagged and restarted behind the safety car. Aaron again began his push forward, until he found himself off the road at Turn 2.

"A car had gone across the dirt before me, and there was dust and rubbish in the air. I couldn't see at all, and when I came out of the cloud, the corner was already gone and I went off!"