David‘s Diary – MTAQ’s Racing Team Debut

Well, the time has come! The debut of the MTAQ Racing team is finally here.

This weekend myself and the team are heading up to Morgan Park Raceway in Warwick, Queensland for the first round of the 2017 CAMS Queensland Motor racing championships – incorporating the opening round the X3 Series for Hyundai’s.

It has been a great story so far for the Motor Trades Association of Queensland (MTA Queensland). Taking a bog standard, road going Excel that was used to going to from and from the local shopping centre, and converting it to a racing machine. We gave the car it’s first test session last weekend, and the car performed very well, with only a few very minor teething troubles which we anticipated. It looks good, sounds good and is a glowing endorsement for the skills and professionalism of the Institute trainers and our terrific team of apprentices.

For our apprentices – Elliott, Gerard and Will – this is the first step for them from mechanical/dealer workshop and into motorsport. They are all very excited, as am I!

I am very hesitant to put any expectations on our performance this weekend – as anytime you combine mechanical elements with sporting theatre the outcome is very unpredictable, especially with a new car and a new team! But I would certainly like to think (and expect) that we will be very competitive.

The Queensland X3 Excel series this year presents the toughest field in it’s short history – with 4 of the top 5 championship placegetters from 2016, back to have another crack at the title. This includes the reigning champion and runner up. Our opposition has more experience with these cars than us, and have cars that are proven in race conditions but we will be aiming to be in the thick of the action. We will give it a good go!

The weather on the weekend looks like it may be just as unpredictable – with rain/showers and thunderstorms forecast for practice on Friday and throughout Saturday. Our schedule for the weekend is practice sessions on Friday, and then we will jump into qualifying for grid position Saturday morning -Then 4 races across the weekend (1 x Saturday and 3 x Sunday) to decide the overall round winner. It is paramount to finish every race, and start to build the point tally towards the overall championship.

However, I feel we are already winners.

Being able to put together a program that facilitates engagement for all of our corporate partners with our MTAQ membership (backing it up with print, digital and social media activities), introducing new corporate relationships to the MTAQ, giving the association it’s long awaited motorsport program, bring the peak industry body into the sporting side of the industry and creating a pathway for engineering talent to move into motorsport – all in the space of a few short months!

It is a great story.

Of course, we would not have been able to put together the program without our terrific corporate partners. The support and enthusiasm we have had for the project since it was first floated has been terrific and from a personal point of view, very humbling indeed.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank;