The Accumulator rides again

Lock up your points! The Accumulator is back.

Nissan's highest placed V8 Supercars championship driver Rick Kelly is riding high with six consecutive top 10 finishes and is determined to keep adding to his tally.

But the driver nicknamed 'The Accumulator' during his 2006 championship-winning season for his uncanny ability to keep finishing races in the points is deeply aware he entered the Tasmanian round of the championship at the Symmons Plains bullring near Launceston last year fourth in the championship and exited in 11th after a disastrous weekend.

This year the 32-year Jack Daniel's Nissan Altima driver will arrive at the Tyrepower Tasmania SuperSprint on March 27-29 eighth in the championship after the Clipsal 500 opener and determined to glean the best result possible at a track that does not suit the developing VK56DE V8 engine.

"There are tracks our car goes well at and there are tracks which are a little bit tougher on us," Kelly told v8supercars.com.au. "I think we will go there and give it our best shot, but it's going to be tougher on us than other places."

A blown brake master cylinder seal dumped Kelly into the sand trap at the end of the back straight in one race last year and he didn't finish another after a clash with Ford ace Chaz Mostert.

But his goal is to avoid those sorts of dramas this year.

"What we don't want to do is have a car with the potential to finish 10th and finish 20th. We need to get as many points as we possibly can. If our car is only good enough for 15th then we damn well need to get 15th."

Kelly's season did in fact start with a 15th place in race one at the Clipsal. But he then followed up with sixth and seventh in Adelaide, before going 8-6-8-7 in the four non-points races at the F1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix.

Significant upgrades to the VK engine are underway at Nissan Motorsport now and should be rolled into the four-car squad from around mid-season. But Kelly is conscious that until more power arrives his job is to accumulate the most points he he can with what he has got.

"At the moment we are hovering around eighth in the racing, so we want to move that into the top five and further forward and then you can start to build that points base. Then when we do get that engine later in the year we move that forward as far as we can.

"But for that Symmons round it is going to be trying to get ourselves into the 10, get the points and move on."

He is downbeat about any aerodynamic assistance the Altima's new outboard-mounted rear wing will provide: "The guys have done a bit more work on refining it and getting the best out of that current shape. And its one of those things, once it's done you put it out of your mind and get on with the next thing."

Kelly is conscious how easy it can be to have your championship ambitions erased by DNFs and poor finishes, using his 13th place overall finish in 2014 as an example.

"For us it is not to break the records, it's just to build that points base up as best we can. Last year we had a lot of ups and a lot of downs. We had a lot of - in my opinion - questionable drive-throughs and stuff from speeding in pitlane and even though we had that we still finished only 18 points from 10th in the championship.

"Without the mishaps we would have been well and truly in the 10. So this year we want to get through without the mishaps and making sure we maximise everything we've got."

The Symmons format changes this year, with two 60km races replacing two 100km races on Saturday. The 200km race stays in-place for Sunday.

Tyre rules change from six softs sets of Dunlops to three hards and one soft set (for Sunday only).

Like every other combination, Kelly and new engineer George Commins are grappling with how to maximise the limited amount of rubber available at events this year. And while complaints are common along pitlane, he says the problem presents an opportunity too.

"When you get towards the end of the year you are going to have no (fresh) tyres to practise on at the events. It's going to be old rubber and then bolt on greens and see where you are at in qualifying.

"Whoever manages that process and bolts on greens and goes really well straight away and predicts what the car is going to do driving and set-up wise will do well ... at the end of the day whoever is at the top at the end of year has done a good job of exactly that.

"We need to start working through that now and treat it more as an opportunity to do a better job of that than what others do."