Well the third round of the Australian Off road racing was always going to be a make or break race for the Championship and it turned out to be just that.
With it’s one section format meaning points were only allocated for the race as one section, finishing was crucial which is tougher than it sounds for a race that is known as fast and hard on engines.
The weekend started less than perfectly for SMU Racing when the car was put on the dyno machine in Adelaide. It was quickly established that the problems that the team had been encountering for the first two races had finally been identified with a slipping torque convertor the culprit. Engine horsepower being lost at the wheels intermittently was the symptom. A tough problem to identify but a big thanks to Troy from TeeZee Tuning who was on top of this.
Thanks to Albins, we were able to get our hands on a new one as the team prepared for a late Friday night putting the new convertor in. A big thanks to Tim Collard who made the drive from Melbourne to Waikerie via Ballarat and Toby Francombe who kindly let the SMU Racing team invade his workshop to work on the SNAP SMU Racing Jimco for the evening.
The team finished well into the early hours of Saturday morning! The A team were on! Championships and races were won and lost, stories from the 70s to the 2000s were discussed and embellished at length and somewhere in there the SNAP SMU Racing Jimco was the recipient of a brand new torque convertor. The prologue would soon establish if this was the issue the team had been chasing all year….
Beaten by Jack Rhodes in the Prologue by half a second meant that Matt Hanson had his car back and all was set for a good weekend. A third in the Top ten shoot out had the team optimistic ahead of Sunday’s race.
The flag dropped for the race on a wet and dreary Sunday race day but the racing was anything but, as the cars started two at a time on the wide-open Waikerie track. Early on lap one OBR’s Trav Robinson was parked, and after getting the jump on young gun Tanner James off the start we only had Jack Rhodes ahead of us. It was our first time at Waikerie and it was living up to expectations from all of the Off Road ‘Legends’ in our team as being one of the best circuits in Australia. A fast and challenging track with plenty to keep you busy. Trying conditions with pouring rain meant drivers really had to be on their game.
At the end of Heat One we were in second place, 41 seconds behind Jack Rhodes and 43 seconds in front of the hard charging Scott Schiller and importantly 3 minutes 43 in front of Shannon and Ian Rentsch who we needed to make some points up on in the Championship.
With the car running faultlessly we headed off for the start of heat 2 determined to make some time up on Jack.
As Off Road racing so often does, our race came to an abrupt end with 10kms to go in what was going to be a good Heat 2 for the team. Our engine let go which meant effectively our race was over. Early predictions are that our earlier torque convertor issues going into the race contributed to our engine issue.
Overall not the result we were looking for after showing good pace throughout the event. But the flip side is the issue that has been plaguing us for the first two rounds has now been fixed.
Like Travis Robinson, we know that we are effectively out of the Championship race for 2014 with Shannon, Jack and Beau left to fight it out but we will go to Coffs Harbour and Lockyer Valley with our old car back and look to have some fun.
Thank you for all the support from everybody at Waikerie for the event. A great crowd and a very enjoyable race to be a part of.
SMU Racing Team Driver Matt Hanson with local SMU Racing fan Jayden and great had drawn pic of the SNAP SMU Racing Jimco
SMU Racing would like to take this opportunity to thank its terrific partners for 2014:
Snap Print Design Websites, Jatco Engineering, Shane Wilson Competition Engines, Racer Imports, Shane Cottee Desert Prep, Race Paint, Dynamic Wheels and Tyres, Peak Lighting, Albins Off Road Gear, HJC Motorsports, Be Nutts, Jimco, offroadracing.com.au
What a drawing!
