RACE
REPORTS:
Australian Nationals - Willowbank Raceway - Wet and Wild
November 4th, 5th and dismal 6th
Previously in our race reports we have touched on the subject of the wonderful friendships you develop in racing - the highs and lows and the fact that you have to have a huge heart to put up with the lows. Tuesday was pretty low at about 8.30 p.m. in the shed at home when Lionel discovered we had a broken cam. Wednesday morning Lionel rang Martin at Crow Cams and you have to give the worlds biggest plug to Crow Cams as we simply asked him if he could grind us another exhaust cam in a day and get it in an air bag after lunch because we want to go to the Nationals and he said "Yes I think we can" and they did. So if you want a cam for your race car engine why not give Crow a try.
Nathan picked the cam up from the airport, Lionel took time out of his busy day Wed came up home fitted cam, started engine, all ok, so we loaded the Toyota genuine parts hot rod & hit the highway arriving at Willowbank about 11.00 pm along with Russell & Melissa Mackay in the other Team Capricorn Supercharged Outlaws car after Russ having more trailer troubles at the Bundaberg Apple tree Creek turnoff, broken trailer spring on the tri axle. What you have to appreciate is we are reasonably isolated from the hard core racing scene in Rockhampton and we have very few people that are qualified and who are prepared to put the enormous effort in and one of them is Lionel Durre. If we did not have Lionel we would be absolutely knackered. He can not always come away to the race meetings as he has a young family and he has expanded his business and built his own shed and increased his labor force and physically and financially he can not afford the time off work but what he does do is he comes up to our shed on the night before or when ever we require him and we can not thank him enough.
It is a different thing when you get to the race meeting without him as sometimes we get into trouble and again that is when mates and friendships you have developed help. We can go to any number of race teams - Darren from Zaps crew is always willing to help and again John Payne from Brisbane. John never wishes to cut in on anyones turf and he just says "is anyone giving you a hand" and when I tell him that Lionel has too much on his plate and he gives us a hand he is only too willing to do so. We tried some different things and we will be the first to admit that we have learnt a lot in the last couple of years and hopefully with some more track time, which is hard to get, we can improve more.
Speaking of track time, our first qualifier was Friday at 5.01 p.m. Pretty good light .433 and an 8.18 at 163.87 MPH - a good banker as you would put it. Under the Willowbank rules, we certainly qualified under the 8.30 but under the National rules it is 7.99 cut off. Speaking of rules there was a petition passed around by the supercharged outlaws to go back to ANDRA requesting them to change the top end cut off, especially in the summer months to 8.30 and equate the bottom end to 6.50 for both Sedans and Open cars. Currently we have sedans in the ridiculous situation of not being good enough to compete in comp, such as Stuart Bishops car (which is for sale and it would be a tremendous buy for someone at $105,000 turn key complete with spares), and surely that is against what racers want to do.
A few changes from John Payne and 12.02 on Saturday we got another chance in even worse air 28 degree, 72% humidity, relative altitude 2195 feet above sea level, where as Friday's was 25 degree, 84% humidity and 1894 relative altitude. An improving 8.08 at 160.94 MPH which meant we were heading the right way. With the rain, Thursday, Friday and intermittent on Saturday, our third qualifier which was supposed to be our first round of elimanation Saturday night, ended up being the last runs of the night after the nitro funny cars at 10.21 p.m.
Every supercharged outlaw racer in the staging lanes when they were advised that the nitro cars were going to be on before rather than after us were thankful that they kept all the legs into them and did not hurt the track. The time we ran it was 23 degree, 96% humidity, 1774 relative altitude and it improved yet again ever so close to a 7.99 with a 8.038 at 162.45 MPH.
We were keen to race on Sunday only to wake up and find out that they had cancelled the meeting at 9.30 on Sunday morning and the time we left the track it was close on 1.00 p.m., picked up our BBQ from Zaps Rat team. Since borrowing our BBQ to celebrate after that famous 5 second run at W.S.I.D. A C DELCO Nationals the borrowing of our BBQ has become a standard event, it was nice to catch up with the now shorter haircut Fast Freddie from Sydney and we look forward to catching up with all the Zap's Rat team in Perth in March 2006.
We now have December off to try and recuperate some money expended on the rained out nationals and we look forward to January's Willowbank meeting on the 6th and 7th (it is now a 2 day meeting), followed by round 3 of the supercharged outlaws on the 4th February before we travel all the way to Perth for the Western Nationals - 4th and 5th March. Unfortunately we will miss round 4 at Willowbank on the 11th March.
To the hard working crew - Zac, Bruce and Andrew and to my mate Alan Croft who came down on his Suzuki Hayabusa. He enjoyed the ride down but did not enjoy the ride back in the rain.
Everyone have a safe Christmas and an intoxicated New Year and maybe some sleep to catch up would be appreciated by all concerned.
Regards
PETER PEIRANO
FEEDBACK...
Peter,
Congratulations again on simply a great effort. You and your team deserve all the best in the future, even when you don’t win you should be granted a place just on sheer effort and determination, no one could ever argue your lack of passion of the industry and for that I admire you!
The new shirts look fantastic!!
Keep up the good work and I too hope to be there one day with you celebrating in Pit lane
Stacky
G'day Peter,
Really good stuff. Very informative and pleasing to see you've been keeping busy.
To you and your team, all the best at Willowbank and Perth, but in the meantime have a happy, merry and safe Christmas.
Regards,
Kevin
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