Sandown Hysterics

[BGTV8]

So I had my race car on the track for Sandown Historic (Melbourne, Australia) races last weekend.

It was the first time in 2 and a quarter years I have been in the car, having re-built the front suspension following a RHF ball-joint failure that tore the wheel out of the car (failure occured a very high speed - over 265kph).

Since prior seat time was a problem I was quite conservative in building up to speed (I entered Friday private practice to get additional laps) and was well off PB in quali on Saturday morning (by well over 3 seconds). That was good enough for P2 as the major competition broke a rocker on Friday.

Saturday afternoon race was interesting - I kept over braking the car and having to accelerate up the the apex - I was really struggling to get deep enough under brakes and believe that the car would stop. Sandown has 2 long straights with a big stop from 265kph into T1 (and down from 6th to 3rd) and a solid push into T6 from 255kph down to ~195-200 and 6th to 5th before tipping it into the corner and I could not get my head around how deep I could go.

So it was a case of take 2 or 3 metres each lap and let the times come to me.

The other thing was SWMBO was adamant that racing (and other priveleges) would we withdrawn for a very long time if the car (or me) suffered an efarkeration, so I had the domestic driver-coach whispering in my ear every lap that had to be ignored.

Bottom line was P2 quali and 3 x P1 race finishes so I was pretty chuffed. Pulled over 2.5 seconds out of my quali-time with maybe another 15 tenths still to come ... I forgot just how good this thing is under brakes and the re-engineered front end is brilliant.

Photo's of the accident in 2015 and a couple from last weekend are attached ....

A category video package being edited and will post a link here when available