Re-focused Skaife to take conservative approach.

The birth of his second child has given Holden Racing Team's Mark Skaife a new focus and a fresh perspective, and the five-time series champion has admitted that he will take a more measured approach towards winning another crown.

HRT team leader Skaife admitted that he had often 'pushed a bit too hard' in recent years, and his new outlook on life would see him take a more conservative approach in 2006 in a bid to win a record-breaking sixth championship.

Skaife's wife Toni recently gave birth to a girl, Mia Rose, just days before an important two-day test session at Winton last week, and ahead of this weekend's first round in Adelaide.

"You realise what's important when you're present at the birth of your child," Skaife explained, "We spend our lives focusing on cars going around in circles, but it all pales in comparison to this. It's a very similar feeling to how I felt after Mitch was born - it's like someone has hit the rewind button. I was the reigning champion back then and it really makes you stop and take stock of what you've got and how lucky you are. It gives you a really good balance."

Team-mate Todd Kelly, whose own son Mason has just turned one year old, agreed that having a child altered his perspective as the most successful season of his career unfolded. Kelly won three rounds - in China, Darwin and Bathurst - and finished a career-high fourth in the drivers' championship.

"I found that having Mason at home, and sometimes at the racetrack with me, really helped me to relax," he said, "It was actually more productive to sit down and have a play with Mason and clear your mind than to just keep thinking about racing.

"Kids are a great stress release - spending time with them stops you from getting too wound up about everything else that's going on. If having a baby is as good for Mark as it was for me, it's going to be a great change for him."

Skaife said he had reflected extensively on his performance in 2005 and concluded his approach at times had been too aggressive.

"You have to be honest with yourself and realise that, last year, we cost ourselves the opportunity to finish well on a couple of occasions because we wanted to win a bit too much," he said, "Sometimes, it was my mistake by pushing a bit too hard, other times, it was equipment or other failures. The greatest lesson I have learned from last year is that I need to accept there are times you can't win the race or the round. We definitely need to be more disciplined to bring the car home for as many points as we can get."

HRT has won the Clipsal 500 three times in the event's seven-year history, and Skaife said it remained one of his favourite events.

"The 500 has been a great event for me personally, I have really enjoyed racing there and it's always an intriguing sort of a race," he said, "I'm going out there to win it and get our season off to the best possible start - but I'm also going there with the thought that it's a very long season and it's not worth taking unnecessary risks at this early stage."

Kelly said that he expected a concerted effort to build on his fitness to pay dividends, particularly in the latter stages of the two 250km races this weekend.

"If you look at the Clipsal 500 in the past, lots of drivers have made mistakes in the latter stages when you're usually absolutely knackered," he explained, "Nine times out of ten, you can trace those sort of errors back to fatigue, dehydration or lack of fitness. You could always be fitter, but I'm in pretty good shape right now, certainly fitter than I have ever been at this time of year before. I think I'm as prepared as I can possibly be."