As soon as we hit the track on Fridays practice the car felt good. It was the first time the new car had turned a wheel and there were no issues at all. We got straight into set up stuff and the car responded very well to everything we did to it and it felt to me like it should for the first time this season.
Once we got into qualifying we made only very minimal adjustments and the balance was quite good. Ending up 8
th We were all disappointed with the qualifying result but at the end of the day we were in the top ten and it was the best result we have had all year and we know if we had done a few things differently we could have got a better result, which I guess is what we were annoyed about.
As a race car the car was very good considering how long we have had this spec chassis and suspension and the amount of tuning knowledge we have on it. The only real drama we had for the races was the gearbox not coming out of gear in every gear which was costing us a bit of time.
The second race for the weekend was shaping up really well until I made a big mistake and flat spotted the right front tire. It was within a millimetre of its life for the last 15 laps of the race and I was expecting it to blow at any time. Luckily it didn’t but I had to let a few cars past to get it home. In the end it turned out that we were extremely lucky in that race as we found that it had a broken valve spring and a bent valve for the last 12 laps.
It was on for young and old after the race. Because of the time difference and the TV both races are really close together and the guys only had around an hour to get the engine change done.
As always they got it done just in the nick of time and I was sitting in the car in our garage ready to go and basically drove straight into pit lane and a minute later was out on the track for the race.
Again the car was good in the race. If we weren’t under so much pressure between races in hindsight we should have made a few small changes to suit the different track conditions compared to the earlier race. In the end it wouldn’t have made much difference as the engine decided it wanted to stop half way through the race. It was extremely disappointing for the whole team as we were trying to be sensible all weekend and get solid championship points to try and move forward. It turned out to be the Motec CDI which is part of the ignition. Such a simple thing but the engine cant do without it.
Myself and some of the crew are still here in Perth until Wednesday for a ride day so it will be a good time to go over the weekend and try and improve for Sandown.
Over all we are all extremely happy with the progress and straight out pace of the new car. The amount of work that everyone at Perkins has done so far this year is outstanding. Hopefully a result is just around the corner for us.
All the best,
