Heck of a deal on Triple Eight trade ins

Ford Performance Racing will offer Ford supporters a chance to trade-in their soon-to-be-redundant Triple Eight merchandise at Queensland Raceway this weekend.

On the back of confirmation that Triple Eight will swap its racing Ford V8 supercars to move to Holden next season, Blue Oval supporters can pick up an official Ford cap for just $10 when they trade in their Triple Eight merchandise.

The offer is a cute sidelight to the more serious business of trying to retrieve something from a largely barren season as the 2009 championship gets closer to the business end.

Winterbottom and Richards have now conceded the V8 Supercar Championship is almost certainly out of their reach.

That presents each round as a golden opportunity to shine as the conservative approach is thrown out the window to develop FPR's base set-up and mount a campaign for the Ford faithful.

"I go to every round expecting to be quick but Ipswich suits my style and I feel like I can drive the car a little bit harder there than I could at Sandown," said Winterbottom.

"I've raced at Ipswich in really good cars, really bad cars and everything in between and there are definitely ways you can squeeze a bit more out of the car there with a bit of track knowledge so I'm confident about a good result.

"I've got nothing to lose now," commented Richards. "We still want to finish but we can push that little bit harder."

"We're trying to not get too carried away with a lot of changes; we've got a couple of significant things that we want to have a run with at Ipswich to review where we are. We hope that makes the car better but don't want to step too far away from our normal set ups."