David’s Diary – Willowbank Wrap

The MTAQ Racing team has had it’s 2nd hit out for the year, at Queensland Raceway over the weekend for the Federal tyres cup. A big thank you to everyone that made it out to cheer us on.

From the team perspective, it was an up and down weekend on the scoreboard, but in terms of morale and excitement – it was very good and very encouraging as we continue our development and learn more about the MTAQ excel.

The car still has a few little things that are holding back a real breakthrough performance, but it is nothing that we cannot tidy up between now and our next event. For a car that was designed as a shopping trolley, it is actually a very complex thing to get the best out of! We have learned a hell of a lot in a short time and our hard work is starting to show.

Friday’s practice went quite well early on, and I was able to tail the eventual event winner quite comfortably which was VERY encouraging that the car was fast, but there is some little gremlin that is altering the cars tune and it surfaced in the afternoon. We were able to work it out pretty quickly, so we were pretty confident heading into Saturday for Qualifying.

Qualifying was a bit of a disaster – the car had a clutch problem early in and it basically made gear selection impossible. We traced it back to air in the clutch system, but meant we got sentenced to start 22nd out of 32 cars, and a lot of ground to make up.  Saturday afternoon’s Race 1 went very well – and we were able to charge forward to finish a fighting 13th  in a very intense race with a lot of biff and barge – and yours truly was in the thick of it! The car has a few “love marks” but nothing major.

With that strong result we started Sunday mornings Race 2 in Position 13, and within striking distance of the lead group, and we were confident of making a rather large pest of ourselves in Sunday’s races.
The boys put in an enormous amount of work Saturday afternoon tuning the car up more to give us a bit more pace, which I am pleased to say they were able to do with absolute flying colours – I was impressed given they did it more or less from gut feel.

Race 2 we got off to a flyer, round up a few to shoot through to 9th on the first lap and with the leaders in the gun sights….and then the clutch failed again at the end of the first lap and we were sidelined. It is a faulty part in the system that we will fix for the next event – we aren’t having a lot of luck in this department but that is the game we play. We are pushing to the limit and are still working our way through what is up to the job and what isn’t.

This meant we had to start the Final dead last – 32nd place. So with nothing to lose, I had a pretty fierce crack…The car was tremendous too, it had real pace and I was able to slice through to 13th, which is hard work from last with the cars all so even!

It was great to be able to do, and certainly very satisfying to pass so many cars – many of which were in front of us last time out in Warwick! We had one of the fastest cars on the track in that last race too, which is a testament again to the hard work from everyone. If it wasn’t for the clutch issues that kept pushing us down the field, I think we would have finished the weekend in the top 5 and well in contention for a podium – which in a national standard field would have been a massive feat.

We can take a lot of heart from the weekend, in that we are making some pretty rapid progress. The level of competition in the class has certainly gone up a few notches from last year and I think we are now in the thick of it.

The team was once again sensational in the heat of race weekend. The boys were able to perform a minor miracle with tuning the car on Saturday and Sunday – the hit the sweet spot with it, and did it without the benefit of any diagnostic equipment! It was all done by talent and gut feel, just using the skills they have and problem solving by thinking their way through the process. To say I am proud of our MTAQ Racing Crew (made up of two apprentices and one MTAQ member) is an understatement – they obviously have learned a great deal from their time at the MTAI and this was the highlight of the weekend for me.

What they did, some trained professionals couldn’t do with 50k of diagnostic computers; and to give them an encouraging result after the setbacks with the clutch was fantastic. Morale within the time is very high and we are all very much looking forward to our next outing!

This will be back at Warwick on Sept 2-3 for the 2nd round of the Queensland championships.

We have a list of improvements to make on the little beast, and I am very bullish on how we might go in a month on a track we enjoy!