Bathurst...
...was good.
Thanks: the service crew. Mum (Jill) and Dad (Martin), Gemma, Tamsey and of course, Simon. They all worked really well as a team the whole weekend and were damn enthusiastic and getting more and more professional like. Memorable moments was me asking them to swap the tyres front and back in the 10 minute service. I walked up to the toilet and back and they had just finished doing it in about 5 minutes or less. I'm not talking axle stands or anything just jack up one side of the car, swap and back down again. Simon did a bit of pre-rally work for as usual at his own expense. Extra welding on the new front cross member and fixing up the lower radiator support that was a bit knackered. Tamsey came along and quite frankly I was a but dubious of his mechanical work after seeing some of the pre-RoC 2004 work that Tamsey did so I was honestly surprised that he pulled his fair share of work....sounds harsh but he did a great job and I'll be happy to invite him along any time in future. Thanks to Daniel for lending me some roadtyres on VR4 rims for the Panorama stage.
-Martino, for coming along for the ride: We finally got a chance to do our stuff in a car with power, handling and didn't break down at one point or another.
After sticking it off at Oberon, I had to replace the front cross member as the front wheels were just a little bit too far back in the wheel wells. Interestingly the difference between a spread cross member and the spare one Martino brought was about 7mm! Replacing the front cross member, fixing a turbo leak, replacing the oil filter bracket etc in a single car garage is no fun and consumed most of the time between Oberon and Bathurst. I also put another worn set of brake disks on the front to try and remove the brake knockoff. Fitting the cross member sucked. Either the body of the car is about 3mm closer together or remember to not reinforce something until it is in the car!
I ran out of time to fix a big dent in one of the mandrel bends in the 2 1/2" exhaust, nor didn't get around to the putting in the better map into the ECU. Denis Stevens of Qwrx Motorsport had given me some half worn BF Goodriches but had reassured me that they are a tyre that kicks out equal grip right down to the block. Lastly, we had some worn tyres from the Oberon event to stick on once the Michelins were shagged so no new tyres for this event.
Seeded 27th. Asked to be moved up a bit after showing Jo Moore, the busy Event Secretary the results, and we got moved to 17th - all good - but I figured it would all help running the Oberon stages later in the afternoon/evening. 10 stages, 8 services! Was pretty handy. 176km competitive, ~446km transport if I remember correctly.
Mt Panorma & Hen and Chicken. I know I suck on these stages so didn't try anything stupid or risky at all and got smashed in the times. The Evo is a good thing on dirt, on tarmac it is even better changing up a gear gives even more of a jerk on tarmac as you hit the low down, max torque point. I launched slowly off the start line and then hammered it into 2nd and I swear the wheels spun. Pretty cool.
A call on the Thursday before from a certain top punter told me to take it easy down Conrod straight and not lunch the engine. So I ended up at limiting myself 5,500 rpm and the speedo ran jammed on the Odometer reset button (looks about 10kph past 180) so I thought that would be a good place to limit myself. Personal note: 160kph through the Chase is still way too slow. By the time we went past the club house we had run out of gears and revs!
I had a guess, along with a quick chat with Bede, at some stiffer than normal suspension settings for Hen & Chicken thinking it would be similar to Bega and the car was just too stiff and slippery so back to the drawing board on that one. Stage times were in the 20's I think i.e. crap for the cars capability. Pet hate: on TV you hear, blah blah did a top 20 stage time. Can't they just say, "they came 20th"!
Had about a 70km transport and regroup before SS3 where we went and did the real forest racing. Stuck in the Oberon suspension settings and they seemed to do the job. The stage length went 20, 26 and 33 or something. Lots of hump, jumps, yumps and bumps and dips. Most were in the book. Got used to braking on the double caution ones then later on learnt that the single caution ones could be taken with a lot more grunt. I swear on the humps is where the 4WDs make up the advantage. Back off a bucket load them, mosey on over, then back into it and its onto full boost in not time. Jumping off some of the single humps was a hoot. I just wondered if I was going to have to replace the cross member again.
We had brake pad knockoff all rally, really bad after going through any corner but not a problem in a straight line. One time caught me out. Charging down hill, left, 100 then right etc. Road went left braked and turned but didn't brake so much as a result and flew into a bank with a gutter just before it. I thought we were going to roll as we were in a very similar state to when I killed the GB Galant years ago. I just managed to get the car to turn a bit, took a bit of hit and we drove along the bank. I struggled for a few km's to get back into the groove after that, often either a) overcooking any corner or b) just driving around the corner. I just don't have the mental side back online at the moment.
Made an effort overall, despite the brake problems, to close up the braking distance into corners. Often got it right on the faster stuff, but then would brake at the same point out on the slower stuff and just be wasting time. Other times, just found myself lightly on the brakes doing what I don't know. The car doesn't like to slow and turn at the same time, with standard brake bias. It's happy doing one or another not both. So I'd leave my braking to the last minute, slow down well then fug up the turn in etc.
The Michelin's didn't blow me away with extra grip but they seemed consistent and considering they were half worn they did seem to do what other tyres do with more tread. By the time they had done the 80km competitive to the big service they looked knackered - down to the wear indicator - but the car wasn't different in oversteering/understeer so in retrospect they must be a good thing. Regardless, I didn't spend $800+ buying four new tyres so two thumbs up I guess!!!! Thank you Denis!
After the big 60 minute service at Oberon I think we had 3 stages and 60km competitive to go, we were behind Gerald Schofield in the very, very smart and immaculate looking Evo 6.5 - as Frank Barker had clutch problems, and Pete Ewing wasn't happy with the world. Frank is a legend. At the beginning of stage when he knew he had a clutch problem, he let us - and I think a few other cars go ahead of him before we checked in as he thought he might held us up. We were very grateful. Pete Ewing also pulled over in one of the later stages, in stage, when he was having problems to let us pass. Again, Pete, legend! We were ahead of Gerald at Oberon, I know he had done RoC as well but as Jme said in an earlier post, he was hauling arse at Bathurst and had been taking time off us all day long - which we didn't know until we saw the results at the end of the night - so we decided to put the foot down on SS9 and did some 20 seconds off him and 5th? on the stage but I suspect that he had a problem because it seemed out of character on his results. Full credit to Gerald Schofield for his improvement and drive!
Umm. So we finished, amazingly, in 6th outright. Took a while to sink in as my best result. Some of the better things that I got out of it were that we finished an event in the new car, and that the car didn't have any problems that caused me issues. Okay poorly explained, but don't you doing an event when you plodding along and something breaks on the car for one stage i.e. a puncture or spark plug issue and you lose 2 minutes and are left wondering what could have been. This was the first for quite a while where we finished with what we started. Rear swaybar dropped a link at some point - softening the rear end for more grip I reckon
- the brakes were annoying but I just drove around them - so to speak - the whole event were the only limiting bits. I'm sort of looking/not looking forward to Bega. Looking forward to seeing how we whether we improved against the ACT contingent, not looking forward to my lack of courage on stuff like crests etc. Next stop though is the CRE ride day.
Mark
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