Well fair to say, not the start we were after at the AORC season opener at St George!
After arriving at the track on Friday at 7am we finally commenced our Prologue run at 5:30pm in thick dust, no wind and blinding sun as it set in the west. Far from ideal prologue conditions. 5th in the Prologue with the only good news that 2 minute dust gaps would be for the top 10 shoot out. This is a must for all events given its importance……
Amazing how good visibility is in a prologue…….anyway (!) dust free and sun free our top ten shoot out started well and we got into the groove. About a third of the way we started losing power down low out of the corners but the engine would clear itself out down the straights. As we got to the end of the 12kms circuit it got worse to the point of almost stalling on the final two corners. As we crossed the line the car stalled and was (apparently) on fire in one of the mufflers! Literally on fire!!!
End result was we used 42 litres of fuel in 12kms (lucky fuel is cheap the moment 🙁 and we came second by 3 seconds. Unfortunately, this was our race end as were not able to diagnose the issue at the track and in any event we believe to be DI injector related which would have been a big fix, if at all.
Never big on race cars sitting round in sheds and unfortunately this is what this car has done for pretty much two years.
Positives
Car still on the pace
Great to catch up with friends we haven’t seen for a long time
First race in a year and second in 2 years…..!
Negatives
Prologue track covered in mud from water truck – car needs to be pulled down for complete clean after 20km !
We didn’t finish and effectively AORC is over us as all rounds count – no dropping weakest round.
Midgee bites that got the crew but didn’t appear until five days after the event. Ouch !
For now injector issues to be found and solved. Next stop Pooncarie and then Finke. Last time racing at Pooncarie was 1997…..!!!!!
Thanks again to all of our partners in helping us get to races this year. Without you we wouldn’t be there
Dutton Garage
Dutton One
Shane Wilson Competition Engines
Mickey Thompson Tyres Australia
Racer Imports
Albins Off Road gear
HJC Helmets (KT Autosport Australia)
Quickbitz
P1 Motorsport
Xtreme DI
Sellyourcarfast
Northern Workwear
Teralume Industries
Quality Metal Solutions
Flexicut Engineering
Dynamic Wheels and Tyres
Jimco
offroadracing.com.au
GO SMU!