The 2nd round of the Queensland Excel championship has been run and won, and for our MTAQ Racing Team it was three parts success and one part disappointment, but as usual we came away with a good story!

We had our best ever finish (2nd), a series of new personal best laps.. and a tour through the Warwick outfield!

Qualifying was solid, with us posting our fastest ever lap around the Warwick layout to lock in 4th position. With the weekend offering a unique four race format, we put ourselves in the mix at the front just as we intended.

The racing was as intense as I have experienced in Excel’s to date – the ante is constantly being upped in the class. It is actually quite remarkable, but at the same time a great challenge.

We fought hard to come home a tidy 3rd in race one, after being shuffled back to 6th off the start. Passing two cars in the last lap and a half to sneak onto the podium. Race two, we were involved in a small tangle at the start and slipped to 4th, but the car was on song and managed to pick off a couple to get up to 2nd place, but by the time I got there, the leader was too far up the road to reel in. 2nd it was, and our best finish for the team to date!  We also equaled the fastest lap of the race, and another new personal best for us. So it was a very good day!

Race 3 on Sunday I thought was our best chance yet to get to that elusive top podium step, making our first race start on the front row of the grid. We made a good start, tailing the leader closely on the opening lap. But then the car developed a small fuel pressure problem (probably from an air leak) and began to slow slightly. At that point attack turned to defence, as the pack behind closed in. With the car not at it’s best, it was action stations to maintain position. Using every trick I know, I was able to keep the pack at bay for most of the race – with one car slipping by at the death.. so we ended up 3rd – which I felt was a tremendous result given we had lost almost a second a lap in speed and was heavily compromised. The car returned with a few battle scars from some very hard racing!

With only 25 minutes between races three and four, we had to work quickly to see if we could locate the issue. We tried a few small things, but unfortunately couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause and Race four was a big battle with the car getting progressively worse – managed to maintain 3rd place on the first lap, but then on lap 2 whilst again defending vigorously, we were hit hard by another car that spun us off the track and into the infield.

Whilst I don’t believe the other driver maliciously intended to fire us off the road (and apologised afterwards) the maneuver in question I felt was highly ambitious. The car wasn’t badly damaged and we kept going, finishing a distant 20th.

To say I was furious afterwards was an understatement…but it was adjudged a ‘racing incident’ and no further action was taken, and that was the umpires call and I accept that and we move on.

Even with the dropping of race four, we still finished 5th for the weekend overall on the back of our 2nd and 2 x 3rd placings – and have managed to elevate ourselves from 26th to 11th in the title chase. But that lowly finish did hurt, with 20+ championship points slipping away. Overall, we were able to claw back six points on the championship leader, but are still some way adrift in the chase with around 12 races to go over three events.

Even though that put a sad ending on the weekend, there was a lot of positives to stem from it. Our improvement is continuing, with a new best finishing spot and lopping seven tenths of a second off our PB lap at Warwick. In excel racing, seven tenths is an absolute eternity!  To give you an idea, nine tenths covered the first 11 cars in qualifying on the weekend…

Every time we go out, we just go better and better and that is very pleasing because we are thinking our way through making the car better as we learn more about it. But that is also reflective of the rate of improvement in the class at the moment. It is just nuts. No-one is standing still. The lap times we are doing now, this time last year we would have belted the field.

Which brings me to the class itself – it is exploding at a very rapid rate and behind the scenes there is an ‘arms race’ developing as teams strive to find more speed from cars. This is prevalent not just in Queensland, but in the other states as well. We know we have to find a bit more engine power from our car, which given the upcoming break we can have a play with it and I am confident we will continue to improve more.

There are now 330 Circuit Excels log-booked in Australia certified to race, and that breeds intense competition. It is an exciting time for the category, as the success of the recent Bathurst event put up in lights how good this format of racing is. The spectators at the track were glued to the fence, and social media lit up with enthusiasm over how exciting the class is to watch.

And the major promoters have noticed.. 2019 holds some exciting prospects and the class is on the verge of being thrust into the industry mainstream with a series of premier events. This naturally opens up better potential commercial and association outcomes, which is equally as exciting.

But for now, we have a nice break in our calendar and won’t be back in on-track action for just over three months. It has been a mad start to the year!