After a long and enforced hiatus away from the thrills of competitive motor racing, the MTAQ Racing Team will be back on track this month for the first round of the Hyundai Excel X3 Queensland State Championship.

The four-race meeting will take place at Morgan Park Raceway in Warwick from August 28-30 and arrives after the original schedule – Round One was to take place in March, and Round Two in June – was upended due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.

That lockdown will now see the championship reduced to two rounds – one in August and the other in November.

For the members of MTA Queensland’s dedicated racing team, just to get out on the track and race competitively after the very strange beginning to the year feels like something of a victory.

“Like most sports and business, motorsport has been affected very hard by COVID-19 and the lockdown,” said David Wood, MTAQ Racing Team leader and driver. “It delayed the start of our season and has meant that the calendar and number of events has been condensed.Some opportunities to compete at national level have also been cancelled or pushed back, and we won’t have a national excel championship event this year.

“Having said that, our main prize – the Queensland championship – is still on the table but will now be held over two rounds. We will also have a non-championship event at Queensland Raceway at Ipswich in October and we have been added as a support category to the Townsville Supersprint event in September – so we are looking at four – possibly five – events this year, assuming no further COVID outbreaks.”

While COVID-19 has played havoc with the schedule, the delay has not, as might have been feared, had an adverse effect on the Excel category itself. If anything, the enthusiasm and commitment from competitors has increased, as has the interest from others in the motorsport community.

“The competitor base has been very accepting of the situation,” said David. “Most people, us included, have used the time to refine and make improvements to their cars and even though we haven’t been able to actually race, the circuits have been available for practice for a while now, so it hasn’t been a total shutdown.

“And the category, especially over the COVID-19 period, has gone nuts,” he added. “Some professional teams at much higher levels have had a lot of downtime and turned their attention to the Excels. Supercars champions Triple Eight Race Engineering head this list, have multiple cars currently being built and are due to join the action later in the year. Without COVID, that may not have happened, and it is most definitely a positive for us to have professional outfits choosing to join! Also, the number of younger drivers stepping up from karts has been very strong.

“The category is just going ahead in leaps and bounds, and we have 80-90 cars in Queensland across the Championships and Excel Cup series. It has come a long way in the four years since MTA Queensland have been involved.”

It certainly has, and the Excel Series being added as a support category at the Supercars Townsville Supersprint doubleheader at the beginning of September is surely a sign of that. The Excels will feature on the second weekend of the event – September 5-6.

“Being involved at a Supercars event is fantastic for the series,” said David. “It is a resounding vote of confidence in our category and a reflection of just how popular the Excels have become amongst the fans and grassroot supporters of motorsport. It’s going to be a barrel of fun being part of such a great event.”

While the regular Excel season has been shortened – and there was a point earlier in the year when no one knew whether any racing would take place at all – the MTAQ Racing Team took advantage of the time to work on improving their Excel. It had performed admirably in the 2019 season with David securing a fourth-place overall finish but, as with any motorsport category, if you stand still and do nothing, you’re really going backwards.

“We were very fast last season, and we have used our time very wisely over the extended break to revisit all the major aspects of the car and correct a few weaknesses,” said David. “We tested it in June, and will test it again prior to racing, and I think we are a fair way ahead of where we were last year.

“Most of our work has been developing further the work we had been doing over the past 18 months and keeping up with the evolution of the rule book,” he added. “We have revised our engine cylinder-head blueprint to try and find some more power lower in the rev range; we have fitted the car out with a new brake system – including a new caliper and pad combination, master cylinder and wheel-cylinder combination, and a revised brake friction material front and rear; and we have also been working hard on our suspension set-up. We have a heavily revised geometry set-up to give us a better centre of gravity and weight transition to improve the car’s ability to turn. All this work naturally includes a few new innovations that we think will give us a real edge – particularly in longer races.

“I have also made a few small adjustments in my driving style to suit these changes, and the extended break has also allowed me to get some overdue treatment on a back injury I have been carrying for a while and that was giving me a bit of grief on race weekends . . . the car wasn’t the only one to get a revision and tune up!”

Helping the confidence levels to remain high has been the continuity in the support team, with the same crew from 2019 working to maintain and improve the car.
“The three guys on the squad – Gerard Field, Andrew Jackson and Will Salmon – are a brilliant group,” said David. “Gerard is very creative and can think outside the square, and him and Will really are our leaders on race weekends which allows me to step back a bit and just worry about the driving side. We also have Cam Howieson who continues to assist between other commitments and always arrives with plenty of ideas!

“We will look to add another member this season to help with the Excel and some other projects we have on the go. And we have also bolstered up in what we call our ‘specialist group’ – which is our wider squad of experts in specific areas. We have a tremendous group, and we all enjoy working together.”

So, after months of waiting, keeping fingers crossed and working hard on the car in the hope that racing would get the green light at some point in 2020, the team is ready and itching to get on the grid.

“I am very confident that we will be right up there in the title hunt and are in a very good position to take on anyone that joins the category,” said David. “We have had a good ‘heads up’ on the new arrivals and have been working to try and do the best we can so that when that high-quality opposition turns up, we have the ability to meet them. Of all the seasons we have competed in, I am by far the most confident I have been heading into a campaign.”

Source: Motor Trader E-magazine (August 2020)

13 August 2020