by Admin
The AASA Australian Tarmac Rally Championship Round 1 report from Dave Scott
I hadn't been in my race car for two years and I had really itchy feet, I needed that adrenalin fix of going flat-out on winding country roads. Peter Washington from Mountain Motorsports rang to see if I was going to run the Australian Tarmac Rally Championship this year and I knew that's what I needed, but there was a problem - I had no money! A quick budget showed a season would cost $lots plus some. I put together a proposal with ProCam, a professional television production company, to air the season on TV in four documentaries. I chased up some people who have supported me in the past and added a few new allies. I had a lot of support from Fulcrum Suspensions, PerFOURmance Motorsport, Mountain Motorsports, and ProCam.
We discussed what could and couldn’t be achieved and it wasn’t until four days before departure day we had the go ahead. The car was still unregistered and had not been driven since it came off the trailer after Targa Tasmania 2010. Since then it had sat collecting leaves, ants, and possum $#!) in the front yard.
After a marathon clean up the car was in to have a pre-race check and service: new brake discs, pads, fluids, diffs tested and pre-load re-set, old fuel replaced, re-program the DCCD controller, spanner check and a few other small things like intercooler water spray unclogged etc. I was fortunate to have Robin from PerFOURmance Motorsports work Saturday and Sunday to have the car race ready mechanically. We had the tune checked on the dyno Monday, then off to Fulcrum Suspensions at Capalaba on Tuesday. Fulcrums did a magic job in setting it up for us and identified a few issues; some they fixed and some they identified as an area for improvement next time.
I drove the car for the first time that afternoon from Fulcrums Capalaba to home and straight on the trailer, packed up the 4x4 and headed off the next morning. My plan was to drive until I got tired, pull over and have a quick sleep in the car, then get going again. Unfortunately due to inland flooding I had to take the coast road which is always a nightmare of road works and slow moving vehicles, so progress was slow and tiring.
The budget didn’t extend to new set of tyres so we recycled a couple of old tyres from 2010 combined with two new ones that I picked up from Stucky Tyres in Melbourne, who always look after me well. Stucky lent me four extra new tyres and mounted them on rims in case I needed them.
I arrived at Mt Baw Baw in the pouring rain. This was the my first visit to this road, and it was so steep I had to use low range in first gear to pull the trailer up the mountain. It is claimed to be the steepest piece of road in the southern hemisphere and I believe it. The road is steeper and tighter than Mt Buller, which suits our car well. I had planned to sleep in the car that night but the resort registrar kindly gave me the keys to one of the motels and I had the entire place to myself. A had quiet night with a dash of rum and up early to set up the workshop in the service park. Michelle (navigator), Robin (PerFOURmance Motorsports), Michael, and Douglas (Film Crew) showed up around midday. Once they were organised we headed off in their hire car to do some recce. I was a bit rusty in calling the notes and it was a bit off-putting with a camera in my face trying to make the calls to Michelle. We needed four passes to get it right when we can usually get it done in two. Happy with the notes we quit for the day. Michelle transcribed the notes that night and we had an early start next morning to re-run the course and check there were no mistakes.
The first run at speed is called a prologue, used to set the starting order for the cars so that slower cars don’t catch the frontrunners during the stages. This was my first drive of the car at race speed for two years and the fastest car I’d driven during that time was a Hyundai Excel. The plan was to use the prologue to dial myself and the car in without worrying about the starting order: just get everything right before the event proper.
I rolled off the start line nice and slow then started to build up speed and by the time I had travelled about a kilometre I was flat out! The car was brilliant - nice balance, none of the high speed wandering we had at Targa. The tyres were up to temp in no time and it was easy to drive. We were a second a kilometre quicker than anyone else on that run and we were pretty happy with ourselves. I was amazed at the skill of PerFOURmance Motorsport and Fulcrum Suspensions to prepare a car that didn’t need a single adjustment straight off the trailer.
Special stage one went well, I took off hard from the start but made a couple of mistakes pushing a bit hard in the wrong places, but I was happy to see we were 8 seconds quicker than second place and 14 up on third. On the second run I bottomed out quite hard on a corner where the road had subsided and towards the end of the stage we had buckets of steam pouring out from the bonnet and the temp light flashing so I tapered off to the end. We just won the stage and luckily this was a service stop for us and Robin fitted a new radiator hose in plenty of time.
At the same time the impact put a small crack in the exhaust which could just be heard leaking, but we didn’t have time to fix it. We continued on to SS3, starting out well, but about 3/4 way up we could smell burning oil - never a good thing. The engine seemed to be running well, no warning lights, but I could see smoke so I backed off and we made it home second on stage loosing 7 seconds.
Robin dived under the car and found a mostly missing CV boot, most likely damaged when we bottomed out in Stage 2. A quick run around the service park and I found a something-bishi part off some rubbish car (thanks Sammy) which wasn’t quite right but it did go on and again Robin got us out before late time. It was raining for this run and the road was wet all the way with a fair amount of fog at the top. We just snuck in a win on this stage, the CV boot was holding up and the exhaust leak hadn’t changed.
The last stage of the day was uneventful and we came in second but finished the day with a couple of seconds lead overall and around two minutes back to third, despite our problems. I was quietly confident about day two after Robin had a good look at the car and found the exhaust wasn’t getting any worse, the CV boot was looking good and the radiator hose was fixed. We packed up and went to dinner.
Day 2, the plan was a cautious approach to the first run in case the exhaust hadn’t liked cooling right down overnight, then if all was still ok we’d go all-out on the second stage and see if we could extend our gap. Unfortunately the exhaust didn’t make it through the second stage and we limped home. After Robin inspected the car we were out, the exhaust had blown and cracked almost all the way around, and the hot exhaust gas escaping had melted the wiring beyond repair.
So close to a fairytale finish! Lots of promise for the rest of the season but disappointing to let that one get away. It makes it much harder from here but not out of reach.
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