We had the car, trailer loaded on Wednesday afternoon in preparation for an early start (3a.m) Thursday morning for the 1000km trip to Sydney.

The trip to the Creek was uneventful and we arrived at the track around 3.00p.m that afternoon, set up the pit and then had the race car audited for safety compliance.

Our first schedule time trial was to be at 11.00a.m on the Friday, we towed around to the staging lanes when it started to rain lightly - the rain then set in and did not stop until the wee hours of the Saturday morning. All racing activity was cancelled for Friday and would recommence on the Saturday. The rain cleared Saturday morning only to be replaced with blustery Westerly winds - fortunately due to the design of the Western Suburbs complex the track itself was sheltered from the winds and with the sun beaming down on the track kept the track in good condition.

We had three trials, with the following results:

First run: 7.674 seconds/174.91mp.h( 280 k.p.h) - Achieved three individual milestones, on this pass:
Best 1/8 mile elapsed time 4.912 seconds Best 1/8 Mile speed 143.22 m.p.h. (229 k.p.h) Best 1/4 mile elapsed time of 7.674 seconds

Second pass in the opposite lane resulted in wheel spin off the start line and consequently did not end up with a representative time - we ran 7.924/at 175.84 m.p.h. (281.3 k.p.h)

Our third time trial was much better with the net result being 7.688 seconds at 176.16 m.p.h. (281.85 k.p.h.)

We were very happy with the first and third trials with a variation in time of only 14 thousandths of a second between them. This type of racing is about consistency and these two passed indicated that we were "right on the money" come race time.

Racing

We nominated a time of 7.65 for the competition and felt that with the 5.30p.m scheduled start of racing we would certainly run very close to this time and make it very tough for our competitor to beat us. From here on a series of "comedy of errors" unfolds which will have an enormous impact on our end result. Firstly we were scheduled to run at 5.30, straight after the Top Fuellers did their time trials - the track was cooling quickly as night fall approached and each of the high horsepower "fuellers" either blew up or smoked the tyres. There was at least two lengthty delays cleaning up the mess form the Top Fuellers which put our schedules start back several hours. When we finally were give the nod for the Outlaws to run it was around 7.00p.m at night. The race car in the pairing directly in front of us in our lane, left the line, went into wheel spin, then blew the motor -Another clean up of about 40 minutes followed. It was 8.15 p.m before we entered our first race. We undertook our normal burnout procedure and reversed back behind the start line in anticipation for the race - we were held by the race officials for approximately 30 seconds and then told to shut down. There had been a computer problem and this would need to be fixed before we ran.

Eventually we were give the go ahead to undertake another burnout and stage - the car left and went into instant wheel spin and we never recovered in time to make a representative run and were well and truly trounced by our competitor. The previous oil down was from 1/4 distance to the end of the track and no preparation was undertaken on the startline - consequently this part of the track was incredibly cold and could not handle our 1000 h.p. beast.

We lost - not through driver error, but by the weather and less than perfect track preparation and were very disappointed with the result. We knew if the track was their we could run the numbers we had done previously that day. A serious of compounding issues spoilt our chances - but this is only the first round of the Australian Championships and we have plenty of more opportunities to pull back the leader at other tracks.

Our next outing is at the Australian Championships at Willowbank on 4th - 6th of November - we can only improve on our result at WSID - keep you fingers crossed for the Nationals .

Regards,

Bevin Buckby
for Buckby Family Racing

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