The first enduro for Racefix Motorsport.

Round 3 of the NSW Production Touring cars championship was a single day/night event with a 1 hour enduro under lights. I was originally entered to run the car on my own for bulk seat time however after a mechanical on the PVS Tuning Evo X at the last national round Tyler from PVS was available to keep the seat warm for the driver B quali, sprint and enduro.

Leading up to the event we made some pretty considerable changes to the spring package alongside a brand new gearbox. The car wasn’t slow per say but we were looking to help it look after it’s front tyres a touch better without sacrificing the great rear drive that we have. It’s fair to say going up in spring and throwing some more camber at it solved the tyre wear issue we we’re having albeit quite fast and loose on worn tyres, in saying that we found it to hold onto the front tyres really well even without bleeding the tyres off during the driver change after 30 minutes of almost quali laps in battles and another 25 minutes consistently in the high 48-low 49’s.

Driver A qualifying (Alek) was nothing to write home about. Whilst it’s still faster than i’ve officially been in the car before it was still a disappointing result despite being stuck in a funny. A class car decided they had to be infront of us bombing past us on the outlap before parking the bus for 2 laps. Bringing home a 1:48.5 on the flag in a very frustrating 15 minute session. The car felt fast but I was quite messy in all of the low speed corners and couldn’t stick a lap together.

Driver B qualifying (Tyler) was a little more successful punching a 1:48.2 on the first flyer and backing it up with 1:48.1, good enough for P1 in class D and qualifying higher than any B1 or C class cars.

Both sprint races were fairly un eventful. I (Alek) had some fun battles after losing quite a few spots off the start (nothing new for me) and probably wasn’t quite assertive enough in the early stages bringing it home with a P3 in class after the McMaster BMW had a mechanical - my first top 3 finish, and P15 outright of 24 starters.

Tyler started his race out of P8 outright which is fairly far up for an 86. Unfortunately the 86 struggles off the line compared to most cars around us. Tyler battled back up to P9 whilst struggling with some class traffic and getting pipped at the line by an M3 moving back into P10 of 21 starters.

After a bit of tune up and a brim fill of fuel we lined up for the start. I was caught napping off the start (literally, it was 9pm) and again lost a few spots early on. The next 30 minutes was some of the most fun i’ve ever had with awesome battles almost the entire stint. I breathed a sigh of relief hearing the radio call of “pit in 2 laps” - previously my longest race was 18 minutes so battling for this long drained me more than i’d like to admit. I brought the car in and handed it over to Tyler P2 in class and P8 overall (after some quicker cars infront had already stopped for a driver change) as the Tierney 86 stayed out and blazed past as we entered pit lane.

We lost a couple of seconds with my transit into pit lane, I had drummed it into my brain to focus on the 40kmh speed limit that I ended up crawling into the lane. Our actual driver change was faster than I expected being all done quicker than the 60 second minimum stop time despite me never doing a driver change and us never practicing regardless of how many times we told ourselves we would… I didn’t plug Tylers radio cable in properly so he left with no comms down in P14. Our static time was bang on 60 seconds so we clearly dropped abit of time in my transit.

Tyler worked hard to get us back up to P11 (P3 in class) gaining almost 2 seconds a lap on the Tierney 86 ahead. With 7 minutes remaining we were on for a move into P2 in class before an exploded wheel left debris all over the road. With no sign of yellow lights or flags Tyler avoided the first few pieces over the blind crest before hitting a large chunk of wheel which cut the sidewall of the tyre. With no radio we had no way of warning Tyler of the debris which also meant we had no way of knowing he was pitting. I ran down stairs, did a wheel change but unfortunately it was too late with the race declared and without the results being counted a lap back (which I hear is usually standard procedure) we were down as a DNF - a real burner to end an otherwise great day!

I was also reminded why class D of prod touring is the place to be for grass roots motor racing. We had 9 entries in a 24 car grid and the top 5 of class D was battling hard for the entire hour. We’re pretty happy with the car for now so all i’ve got to do before the next round is bang out some battle scars and wipe off some rubber before we roll out for round 4!