Moffat lets his driving do the talking

Nissan star James Moffat is putting any thoughts of contract negotiations to the back of his mind as he heads into the new V8 Supercars season with the goal of more consistently delivering the podium results he is capable of.

Moffat finished second in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 with Taz Douglas in his Nissan Altima last October and also claimed pole position for Race 25 at the Coates Hire Ipswich 400 in August, but slipped away disappointingly in the final few races of the year to finish only 16th in the drivers' championship chase.

Now reunited with his former engineer Perry Kapper and the Nissans at least theoretically more competitive thanks to a pre-season aerodynamic rehomologation with an engine upgrade coming later in the year, Moffat simply wants to go racing.

"I just want to get to Clipsal and do the best job I can and start the year off well," Moffat told v8supercars.com.au. "If we are having strong results then the rest will take care of it itself.

"I want more good weekends and less bad weekends, as silly or as simple as that sounds to say," he added. "That's the challenge for us to work away at that and I don't really want to set any expectations other than improving our consistency.

"But we will certainly be trying to give it our best shot that is for sure."

Moffat joined the championship full-time with Dick Johnson Racing in 2011 and spent two years with the Queensland team before transferring to newly-formed Nissan Motorsport for 2013. An impressive first season in which he claimed the team's maiden - and still only - win at Winton prompted a contract extension to the end of 2015.

Moffat, 30, is one of a number of high profile drivers on the open market for 2016. Others include Craig Lowndes, Shane van Gisbergen, Fabian Coulthard and David Reynolds. Six-time champion Jamie Whincup took himself off that list by announcing a new three-year deal with Red Bull Racing Australia earlier this month.

"I haven't really given it much thought," Moffat said of his driving future beyond 2015. "Obviously there will come a point in time in the season where I will have to start talking about it, but up until that point I am trying not to give it much consideration.

"Obviously, I want to keep on driving in the championship and where that may be only time will tell. But certainly I have put a lot of work and effort into things here, but I guess it would be naive of me not to look at other opportunities if they existed.

"But at the same time this is my third year at the team and I feel like we are really starting to build up to something and Nissan is showing a lot of support towards the team. Continuity is such an important factor in this game. You just have to look at Jamie and Red Bull. They are the benchmarks for that."

After the sydney.com SuperTest in which he posted the sixth fastest shootout time, Moffat admits he is still unsure how much improvement had been made to the Altima's aerodynamic package, although he is a fan of the look of the new outboard-mounted rear wing and the Nissan-Nismo colour scheme he is sharing for now with teammate Michael Caruso.

"From the driving point view there has been no change, which is what we were trying to achieve in terms of the aero balance," he explained. "The big thing we wanted to achieve out of rehomologating the aero package was to get more drag out of the car.

"It was hard to tell about that on the test day. I was trying to stick with our test plan and not go bothering with chasing people to see if they would pull away down the straight ... hopefully we see some better results because of it."

But it seems he will have to wait impatiently until mid-year for a significant engine upgrade the team has now started working on with the arrival of new cylinder head blanks from America.

"Hopefully it is the big step forward," he says. "It can't come soon enough for me. It's something when you are entrenched in it and living it and you want the new thing now, but it is not that easy. You have to sit back and take a bit of stock at times and take a look at where we have come from. It's pretty impressive, it's good to be a part of."

Reuniting with Kapper, with whom he worked in 2011 and struck up an ongoing friendship has clearly pleased Moffat.

Kapper spent the last two years working with Todd Kelly and Moffat's former engineer Nathan McColl now moves to work with the co-team owner.

"At the test day it almost felt like we hadn't stopped working together," enthused Moffat. "It was a seamless change ... and I am excited to work with him and hopefully the results flow on from that."