David’s Diary – Getting ready for the Inaugural Invitational Excel Cup

Following on from our successful weekend with the MTAQ trade stand at the Queensland V8 Supercars event, in which we had the Excel racer on display for the 50,000 fans (approx) that attended, It is almost time for the MTAQ Racing Team to hit the track again!

This time we will be gunning to win the inaugural Invitational Excel Cup, sponsored by our wonderful supporters. and MTAQ Members, Federal Tires (Neta).

This the first time Excels have been invited to compete at a National level race meeting, and it is effectively an audition for a rumoured 4 event Australian Excel Championship in 2018, and will serve as a full dress rehearsal for the Excel Nationals event in November.

And the opposition will be fierce…..

Along with our regular CAMS Queensland Championship rivals, we also will come up against visitor excels from other championships including front runners from the NSW, VIC and Excel Track attack series.

This event will feature the 2017 Hyundai National champion, the 2014, 15 and 16 Queensland Champions, the 2017 Queensland championship leader, The top 6 cars from the Track attack excel series as well as young guns from interstate that run at the front in NSW and VIC. All in all, a star studded field of 32 cars – with the best in the business all turning up. In footy, we usually refer to this as “rivalry round”.

It will be a real test of how far we have come in terms of pace, and how far we have to go. Our aim for the weekend is to run inside the top 10, which sounds like a modest goal, but with the quality of the opposition even that will be tough. Having said that, we will be trying very hard and I am confident that if the car is on song, we will be in the mix.

I am nervous about coming up against such tough opposition so early in our development – it is very much “in the deep end”, but I think if the improvements we have made translate to track performance, we will keep a good account of ourselves.

Most of the focus since our first event was to start improving the car and bring it closer to the front running pace, so hence a lot of thought has gone into how we go about that. The first issue to address was the noticeable deficiency in engine power. We recently ran the car on a dyno for the first time – at MTAQ Member G&L Performance – and the initial numbers were disappointing and a long way off the benchmark – this explains a lot!

With some tuning and tweaking, we have been able to find around a 15% gain in power and torque – which is massive! And it brings us up closer to the sort of numbers (we believe) the front running cars have. Although we have some development to go, it is a good step forward. We have also changed some suspension components to help balance the handling, so all in all, I am expecting the car to much improved.

The car is at the dyno at the moment getting a final tune, and will be back for Marcello and the boys to give it a last once over before the weekend.

For those that can’t make it out, there will be a LIVE STREAM of the racing at www.thenationals.com.au  Our race times are Saturday 12:25pm, and Sunday at 8:30am and 11:15am. Enjoy us racing over your morning coffee on Sunday!

Will also have photo and video post event to share.

Thank you again everyone for your wonderful support – and hope to see you all soon!