Coming into the last round of our championship year, we were well in contention to win the championship – a position that we haven’t been so close to in our previous attempts, so naturally excitement was high within the team.  We doubled our efforts in the lead in, to ensure that the car was in top shape for the grand finale.

Unfortunately, during one of our final checks on the Wednesday evening before the event, we found that our engine had a stress crack in one of the major components. With no time to rebuild the engine, we had to switch to a back up unit which we felt would still do the job for us. So despite this being massively inconvenient, we swapped out the damaged engine with the help of the guys at PJR on the Gold Coast  – which is a big job with little time to work in – and completed the prep and set off for Morgan park raceway.  Mark and the guys at PJR and the hard work saved the day for us.

I was fairly confident leading into the event that we had the speed to do what we needed to clinch the championship trophy, and with the set-up that we had in the car. At this point, the weekend took a very disappointing twist during Friday’s practice…

As I rolled out onto the circuit on our first exploratory lap of the weekend, we were involved in a major incident. At Morgan park, the pit lane files out onto the circuit at the end of the main straight and around the exit of Turn 1, which is taken at quite a high speed. As I made my way through the pit lane exit and into the turn 1 exit, we were hit by another competitor at high speed in the drivers side. Whilst the impact was largely “side to side” contact, the velocity was enough to pitch the other competitor into a series of barrel rolls – eventually landing back on its wheels broadside to the track. My guess is it was 120-140kph when the cars came together.

The other driver was a young rookie, cutting his first laps of the circuit and at only his 2^nd car racing event.. it was just experience in knowing how much room he needed to leave and unfortunately, we paid a big price.

Our car was fired off the road with heavy damage. The front and rear drivers side suspension copped the brunt of the hit, bending all of the suspension arms and mounting points, and also damaging steering rack, arms and mounts. The rear quarter and drivers door also took damage. As a result, we lost all of our critical practice and fine tuning time. More concerning, was the damage and how we were going to fix it without the correct equipment. On initial inspection, the damage looked too great to repair for the weekend – however, we didn’t give up and set about seeing what we could do to at least get the wheel’s pointing somewhat straight.

One of the team was immediately dispatched back to the Gold Coast to retrieve all of our spare suspension components, whilst the rest of the crew went to work on bashing mounting points back into some sort of shape. By nightfall Friday, we had the wheels back on and everything beaten back into a shape that we could at least work with, and we started to adjust the suspension geometry to account for the bent mounts.

After doing all of our suspension alignments, the best we could do was not ideal, but it was good enough to at least put on the track. The suspension geometry in Excels is absolutely critical.. even a few millimetres of geometry and can transform a car. Our rear suspension was out 6mm at its maximum adjustment and 6 in the front the opposite way, and the rest was just a “best guess” without proper wheel alignment equipment . The car’s steering rack was also off centre due to it being damaged.

Having missed all of practice, we had to jump straight into the all-important qualifying session with a car that was far from ideal and with an engine we hadn’t ran in anger, with the championship on the line!

At this point, it has all the makings of a Hollywood fairytale…

Out of the 34 car field, We were able to qualify an incredible 5^th – less than 8 tenths of a second off pole. The cars handling was… horrendous. It was “crabbing” due to the alignment being out, the braking performance was terrible and locking wheels easily, and due to the steering rack damage the steering weight was all over the place.  But all that aside, we still put ourselves in the hunt.  We made some further adjustments for race 1, but there was really not much we could do. It was what it was.

With the alignment and brake issues, the car punished it’s tyres quite badly, and after a promising start to Race 1, we faded to finish 6^th.  Race 2 was more of the same Saturday afternoon –  the car was just struggling for speed. We were more than a second off our usual Warwick pace – and the replacement engine was starting to get quite warm and “breathe” quite heavily, indicating that all was not well there either.

With our 2 x 6^th place finishes Saturday, our championship hopes were all but done. In Sunday morning’s race 3, the car was again difficult and used it’s tyres heavily, and with the engine temp again on the climb, we decided to retire the car a few laps from the end whilst running a distant 8^th.  It wasn’t worth damaging a good engine when we were no hope of keeping pace with the leaders, with the car that was running through tyres at a fair rate!

It was a sad way to end the year, but ultimately our championship hopes were dashed with that accident on Friday and the saddest part of it all was that all the work we put in to make the car an absolute rocket came to nought before we even got a lap in. It was a freak accident, and not of our doing – the old saying is “wrong place, wrong time”.  But that is the sort of luck that was dogged us throughout our Excel journey..   It would have been nice to had taken the championship fight right up to the death, but our fate was sealed before even got through practice and even though we did our best to fight on – the accident damage was simply too great to put in a winning performance.

With missing the finish in Race 3, and sitting out Sunday’s race 4 – it dropped us from 4^th to 7^th in the overall championship standings for the year. This is certainly not reflective of the pace we have had, or the work that has been put in.

But, we will pick ourselves up and look forward to 2021…

2021 should be an exciting year and hopefully more normal generally and we get a full racing calendar in.

I think we have achieved some great things in Excels, against some incredible competition, but I think it is time for a new challenge and the team are chomping for a new adventure – so we are aiming to move out of Excels and finish building our new car (1999 Subaru WRX) and move into the exciting Improved Production car category.

Improved Production is one of the largest, most spectacular, fastest growing and diverse touring car categories in Australia. As the name suggests the class is modeled on production based touring cars that have been “improved” for racing purposes. The category regulations are concise yet allow quite a high level of modification, which is something we are looking forward to after the super tight excel regs. The level of modifications permitted and the relatively inexpensive nature of the class provide a foundation that allows both the racer and designer ample opportunity to create a fast and exciting form of racing car.

The class is exciting because of it’s variety – if the car was sold in Australia, it can race!  This provides a wide variety of car, engine and drivetrain options all competing in one group – Rotary powered Mazdas, Howling 6 cylinder BMWs, Turbo charged Toyotas, Nissans, and of course big V8 Commodores and Falcons to name but a few.

It is 20 years since I won the championship in this class, as a fresh faced kid in a raucous Mazda RX3, so it will be a nice return to go back and do this again with the team, in a car that is a genuine classic that is packed with cool tech. The class is still state based, just like excels, so we will be competing for the Queensland Championship. In a cool piece of timing, the category is also holding it’s Australian championship event in Queensland in October next year – at Warwick!  A track we aren’t slow on, and a track that would also very much suit an all-wheel drive car.. like a Subaru, for example..

We hope to complete the build early next year, so expect to see the car pop up at the workshop soon!

Thanks
David Wood, MTAQ Racing Team Driver