It has been what has felt like an eternity, but the MTAQ Racing Team is back for another tilt at the Queensland Series X3 Excel Championship – starting with Round 1 at Morgan Park (Warwick) this weekend March 29-31. This is the first installment in what promises to be a huge year for Excel racing not only in Queensland, but across the country.

We have had a great off season, and we have had a good opportunity to pull the car apart and really scout for further development opportunities based on what we have learned from our past 2 seasons. It has been great to be able to do this, rather than just repair and service as it should see some improvements and keep pace with the astonishing rate of development in the class.

But that is not the only thing we have been pushing with…

This year our corporate support has been very strong, and our new MTAQ Racing Team Facebook Page has been going very well. Last week I wrote an article on Excel racing to help people understand what it is all about, and talk a bit about the class. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that one post has currently generated almost 430 likes, 85 shares, almost 2,000 post clicks and an organic reach of over 10,000. The power of social media! I am blown away. Follow us on Facebook @mtaqracingteam

I have been able to join forces with the team at Carbuzzzn media to produce a 2019 season launch video. One thing I really wanted to do this year was keep improving on what we have done in the past, and really create a new benchmark within our class of racing. Goes hand in hand with the ‘Benchmark of standards” professional ethos of the organisation and having the racing team continue that philosophy. We want to be the team that people look to as the ‘standard setters’ in presentation, and professionalism. I wanted the car to be easily recognised as our colours, and really incorporate some of our colours in the design and do something different to our traditional black base – it is unmistakably MTA Queensland colours and will certainly stand out from the competition.

We were able to shoot and enormous amount of content, and we have enough to start to roll out more in-depth, ‘story’ style videos as well as race wraps – really bring everyone into the team with us, and provide some exciting, engaging social media and website content. I hope you all like it – It is pretty cool! Check it out here…..

It has been a lot of hard work to get the car to this stage, and a crazy amount of hours. We added some finishing touches to the stickers on the car which you can see in the pictures below.

Then we go racing!

Our championship assignment and event schedule is the most challenging we have encountered in our excel journey thus far – with the competition intensity set to go up levels.

With the demise of racing at Lakeside raceway, this has seen an exodus of competitors switch over from the rival “Track Attack” Excel series into our CAMS series – and most of them prolific race winners and very competitive outfits, and this couples with the increasing competitiveness with our own ranks. At the time of writing, we have 30 cars entered for this weekend’s event. Out of that 30, we have 6 former Queensland champions, and a national champion plus a healthy list of Excel race winners – the hitters don’t come much heavier! We also have quite a few new faces joining the category, a some elite young talent out of Go-Karting that we will have to keep our eye on. So all in all, we will have our work cut out for us.

Over the off season we have continued to use our own IP and thoughts to further design and develop. If this proves successful, we will implement some further developments for Bathurst at Easter. It is all about trying to get the jump on our competition, as everyone else is developing too! Over the last 18 months, I am proud to say we have kept up with the development curve and I am hopeful that we will jump ahead on the curve soon.

Our expectations for this weekend, I would say are fairly moderate. We don’t know how we will shape up speed-wise to the field, but I do anticipate that we should be in that front group. It is a long season, and we are racing for the championship this year. I wholeheartedly believe that we can win the championship – and we probably could have done last year.

As you may recall, we had a engine fail at this corresponding first round last year, in the very first race, as a by-product of a debris strike that tore off a radiator hose. We were on the backfoot from the beginning, so this year I would like to come away from the first round with a healthy points bank to set us up for the year and lay the foundation for our championship charge. You can’t win the championship at the first round, but you can surely lose it!

This weekend sees a bit of a format tweak from our traditional Warwick race meets. We usually have 4 races over the weekend, around 8-10 laps in duration each. This weekend sees us in action in 3 races, 2 of them 7 laps and the 3rd is the Excel “50k Challenge” which is a 18 lap 50 kilometre ‘mini enduro’ (unfortunately not 50k prizemoney…), which will test us over double the distance of a normal state championship race. To say I am excited about this longer race is an understatement. Traditionally, our car is very, very strong over a race distance. Our car is always one of the fastest at the back-end of races and we are normally charging home. With how we set-up our Excel, it is very easy on it’s tyres and we don’t have our lap times fall away like most of the other cars. With more distance, I hope that this stretches that advantage and we will be the “winx” that emerges from the pack and flashes to the finish. It would be very nice if this was the case!

From Warwick, we are only 3 weeks away from our biggest trip of the year – Bathurst !

Thank you again everyone for the tremendous support – can’t wait to get stuck in on the weekend.

David Wood

MTAQ Racing Team Driver