The MTAQ Racing Team has arrived in Townsville for this weekend’s Townsville Supersprint, Supporting the V8 Supercars for the first time. Before we talk about this weekend, we will rewind to last weekend and the debrief of round 1 of the Queensland State Championships held at Morgan Park, Warwick.

The Weekend was filled with high’s and low’s for the team, with Friday practice needing to be curtailed early for us due to the car suffering a cylinder head gasket failure. This meant we got very little to no track time to fine tune our race set-up, and almost meant we had to return to MTAQ HQ in Brisbane on Friday night to carry out repairs. The double whammy effect of this failure was also that we lost our primary race engine, having to revert to a back up that we had in the shop. The net result was that it unfortunately isn’t as good as the one we took out!

Still, the team worked through the night to get the car back on the track, arriving back in Warwick at 4:30am Saturday morning, ready for Qualifying at 9am. In Qualifying the lack of set-up fine tune showed, and we were only able to qualifying 11^th fastest out of the 29 cars that were entered. Given the all night/express nature of our repairs it was still a fairly commendable effort.

We made some set-up and engine tune changes for Saturday afternoon’s Race 1 – and this race I feel was our best to date in the team’s history. We tore the front half of the field apart, charging from 11^th to come home a fighting 2^nd in a shortened sprint race. To have a car down on power, and with little sleep and set-up time, to be able to do this was just fantastic and a testament to the hard work we have put in.

We backed that up with another strong 2^nd place in Sunday morning’s sprint race, setting the fastest lap of the race meeting in the process – again this is something we can be very proud of. With the sprint races out of the way, the focus turned to Sunday’s main mini-enduro feature race, and we were very confident that we had a big chance of taking this out.

The race started well for us, just running along in the lead group, before we made our move and took the lead around 1/3^rd distance, establishing a break on the field as the others squabbled over positions.  With a handy lead, that is unfortunately were our race ended – with the car suffering a gear selection cable breakage (a weak point on Hyundai’s) jamming the car in 4^th gear. Along with the race win, we also lost the round win, and what would have been the lead in the championship.

After a massive effort just to get the car to the start line, it was a cruel end to proceedings. Even though we were up against it from the outset, we fought on and nearly pinched the fairytale result. Still, that is the sport and the nature of what we do – it can be as disappointing as it can be rewarding. We still left Warwick 5^th in the Championship, and within striking distance for the final round in November. In order to win the championship we will need a little sprinkle of lady luck, but we aren’t out of it and we will certainly do our best when we return to Morgan Park.

Before then however, our next assignment is the Hyundai version of the ‘rumble on the reef’ – The Townsville super sprint. This weekend we join the V8 Supercars on Queensland soil for the first time, and what a terrific event it is. We will have 3 x 30 minute races, all shown live on Supercars Foxtel coverage, and also available on most sports streaming services such as Kayo.

This weekend is quite possibly the toughtest Excel field assembled, including 2 cars from Triple 8 Race Engineering, 3 cars from Paul Morris Motorsports, and a host of Supercars drivers coming in to have a go – including reigning Australian TCR Champion Will Brown, and Super2 front runners Brodie Kostecki and Broc Feeney. On top of this, we also have some of the best Excel specialists here – including us of course!

With the tight turnaround between Warwick and Townsville, we have had no time to put together a new engine, and have been forced to make do with our spare, which is a bit down on power so we will be up against it – but hoping the way our car handles should suit the tight, concrete lined confines of the Reid park street circuit. Our aim is a Top 5 finish overall for the weekend, and maybe we might be able to sneak onto the podium and bring home a trophy.

The Schedule for the weekend;

Saturday September 5:

Practice – 08:35 to 0905  (30 Minutes)

Qualifying – 12:10-12:30  (20 Minutes)

Race 1 –  14:40-15:10  (30 Minutes)

Sunday September 6:

Race 2 – 11:-05 – 11:35  (30 Minutes)

Race 3     13:40- 14:10  (30 Minutes)