This weekend the MTAQ Racing team is on-track for the last blast of 2018, the final round of the Queensland State Championships, out a the familiar Morgan Park circuit in Warwick.

With a decent break between the last meeting there and now, we have continued playing with settings and developing some new parts to try. Yours truly has also had a good tune up in the lead in!  On the weekend of the 2^nd and 3^rd, I was fortunate to be invited to compete in the Track Attack Excel Bushranger 200 at Queensland Raceway.

The Track Attack series is the alternate Excel series in Queensland, that operate at Lakeside and QR. The Bushranger race is a 200 kilometre endurance race, with 2 drivers and compulsory pitstop for driver change.  200 kilometres equates to 64 laps of Queensland Raceway’s full national circuit – a long way for an Excel! Almost 2 hours in duration.

I am sad in a way, but glad we didn’t enter our MTAQ Car in this event, for reasons I will get to in a minute..

40 cars fronted, including most of our normal opposition from our CAMS state championship, to take on the event – Our alliance partner Phillips Wilson Racing running 4 cars. I was invited to co-drive the 4^th car, which was a recent purchase by the owner, a new competitor to excel racing. The car was never a front runner in the past, and only had a minor tweak by the squad before heading into this event, so we had very minor expectations.

With a full day of practice available on the Friday, I felt though it was an ideal opportunity to take our MTAQ car out for some much needed testing – no better day than when the other excels are on track for comparison!

Our last run at Queensland Raceway (at the Shannons Nationals meeting in August) you might recall was something of a disaster – with engine failure on the Friday prompting an all-night rebuild. We didn’t have any pace at that event, and in all honesty in has been gnawing away at me ever since – we should have been better than the 12^th we ended up, even with our dramas. So I was very keen to get back there with a strong engine and test our suspension revisions.  For the last Warwick meeting, we made some significant upgrades to the suspension – all custom made “in house” with our own IP, and have just completed some further revisions from what we learned out of that Warwick event that we wanted to try.

I am happy to report that the test was a tremendous success, with our MTAQ rocket easily lapping half a second quicker than anyone else in the morning sessions – even with it carrying a full tank of fuel!  It was a nice justification that all of the hours of research, calculations, making parts and fiddling shows that we are heading in the right direction (we had spent about 28 hours making one of the smaller parts alone!) so it is great encouragement.

Our set-up is off on a tangent compared to the stablemate Phillips Wilson cars, so this is all our own R&D and IP coming to fruition which makes it very satisfying.  Had we had the same track conditions and ambient temperature as we had back in August, we would have given Pole position one heck of a shake.

The car enjoyed the higher speed corners of Queensland Raceway, but was still not quite perfect on the tighter, slower corners – of which the tighter confines of Warwick is filled with. So, we still have a little bit of minor fiddling to improve there,  which we have planned for. Whilst we can’t be guaranteed that all the speed will translate to Warwick, I do believe we are in a good position for the weekend ahead, and have taken a handy step forward. I am certainly very confident that we will be a headache for the other front runners!

The Bushranger 200 was a great race. The car I was drafted in to pilot was a good, solid car – but was furnished with an engine that wouldn’t out gun a desk fan!  The total package was very “modest” compared to our MTAQ car – and really highlighted the difference in all the little bits and pieces we have developed and how important all those little things are. It is a tenth of a second here and there, but boy does it add up!

So that made the weekend very hard work, but I was able to qualify it a very respectable 14^th out of 40 – ahead of some more fancied runners. Our strategy for the race was for me to start, and go as deep into the race as we were allowed (1 single driver could only do a maximum of 40 laps) and then hand over to the rookie owner to bring it home once the race had settled.

The race went according to plan for us really, but one thing no one really accounted for was the weather. It was a scorcher of a day, it was 38 degrees ambient when the race started!

I was able to negotiate the early hustle and bustle to settle the car just outside of the top 10, but had to work the car very hard to maintain anywhere near the front pace.  On strategy, we were able to sneak ‘under the radar’ and were running 2^nd on the road when I peeled into the pits on lap 39. It was stupidly hot inside the car and I was keen to jump out and cool off – 38 laps at over 50 degrees in the cabin, at qualifying intensity, meant I slept very well that night!

One of the issues the heat was causing was an overheating clutch which had to be managed, and general overheating of most of the components. The car had to be nursed home, but still got to the end in a decent 17^th. Our goal for the new owner was a top 20 finish, and we achieved that and flew the flag for our team in the process and were far from disgraced.

One of the unique aspects of the “Bushranger” is that re-fuelling is banned  – mostly on safety grounds. So the cars have to travel 64 laps, on only 40 litres of fuel (The tank capacity of the Excel). All of the front running cars would struggle to do without fuel saving tactics, which makes the race super intriguing to watch. Certainly something to note if we want to take the race on ourselves next year.

After the Friday practice sessions, I was being egged on by the stable to enter our MTAQ car as a last minute entry.  I was very keen to do that given the pace the car had, but not keen from the perspective that we had set ourselves for Warwick and I didn’t want to waste the car in the enduro and lose our focus.  Warwick this weekend is the event I want to win, so I declined.

In hindsight, I am glad we didn’t run.  And more than a few of the front runners were not sad to see our car loaded up on the trailer and disappearing Friday afternoon! With the heat of the day, the race was mechanical murder on the cars. Nearly every consumable item would have had to have been replaced, plus the wear and tear on our new engine of running hot for almost 2 hours, and the effort and expense of a tight turnaround. Given the year we have had, it is extra work we didn’t need.

Probably not worth it, the car was much better off being tucked up in the cool at “HQ”– nice and fresh for this weekend and with some more tweaks to try. And I cannot wait to get back into it!

This weekend is “all the usual” suspects for the grand final of our state championship year. We are well out of the title hunt due to a few horror rounds, but that certainly doesn’t prevent us from gunning to win the races and upset the championship contenders in the process. We are currently 8^th in the championship, so hopefully we and pinch a few spots back at this last round.  Rain is forecast for Saturday, so that is something we don’t need as the car isn’t a great ‘wet’ car..  we really want it dry so hopefully the forecasters get it wrong.

A strong result would be a great way to finish an up and down year, so we will be trying hard as always and build momentum for a big 2019.

David Wood

16 Nov 2018