The MTAQ Racing Team is back in action this weekend, for the 3rd round of our Queensland Championships – which doubles up as the annual Federal Tires Invitational Cup, held as a part of the Shannons National Motor racing series.

The Shannons Series is the alternate National “circus” from the Supercars events – and is the home of the exciting new TCR Touring Car formula, which make their debut in Queensland at this event. There is also a big program of national categories including Production cars, Porsche cup and more. So it is one of our bigger events of the year.

The best part is we are a bit closer to home than usual, with the weekend’s battle taking place at Queensland Raceway at Ipswich.

The Ipswich circuit has not been our happiest hunting ground over the last 2 years, with our best finish being a 9th. As we only visit the circuit once in our championship calendar, we don’t have the knowledge we do at Warwick, but based on our speed so far this year I think we can keep a very good account of ourselves. There are 28 Excels entered, and as far as Queensland Excel racing goes, it is the absolute cream of the crop. A very, very tough field.

Being our ‘bogey’ track, and with other competitors having a lot more track set-up knowledge at this facility than we do, it is going to be our toughest event of the year and one that I am approaching with some cautious optimism. I would be very happy to be in the top 5 given the quality of the opposition and our history at the track – but naturally we have done our homework for this event, and we should be poking around the front somewhere.

Being our only ‘local’ event of the year (close to metropolitan Brisbane), it is also a good chance to come and see us in action.

The schedule for the weekend isn’t massively friendly for us, with early starts each day and one race on Sunday.  Saturday is the better race day, with our Race 2 at 1:25pm. This one will be worth catching and I hope to see you all there!

David Wood – Driver

Download the schedule for Shannons National Motor racing series HERE.