24th November 2007 : AUCKLAND CELEBERITY NIGHT.

Well finally Auckland has done it, 11 Auckland superstocks on one night. Now I cannot remember when this last happen, but it must have been back in the days of the Green team or AVD team. Awesome to have the turn out and we still have a few more cars to turn up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good last week, down with the flu and a couple of busy days at work. This meant that the car didn’t get the love and attention that it needed after Huntly. The car had a bad exhaust leak on the left bank and we had little time to complete repairs from Huntly. We know that preparation in the garage gives you the advantage on the track and we certainly didn’t have any of that.

So when the car just wouldn’t go in the first race I wasn’t surprised, it felt like it was only running on 6 or 7 if I was lucky. I managed a lucky 6th place and wanted to get back to the pits to try and find the problem.

On checking the timing it was way out. (Could have happened when we hit the wall in Huntly.) So we reset it and waited for race 2.

This race wasn’t much better and I was only able to circulate again, managing another 6th and watching the likes of Paul, Aaron, Dave, Ricky, Wayne, Paul battle it out up front. By this time it was getting frustrating, so back to the pits again to have another go.

We altered suspension settings in the car for the last as every thing else seemed ok. Just no power, now in the passed when we have had problems likes this, believe it or not it has been cracked porcelain on the spark plugs and they short out under load and at high revs. But in the rush we had not brought any spares (the trucks not big enough).

In the last race still no real pull out of the corners the car was just flat.
Now as the points structure has been changed this year so its only 5 to 1 and 1 point for every finishing car, and I felted like I had no chance of getting into the top four so I decided that delaying Aaron would help with the points situation a little. Plus could have a bit of fun, so off the line I held Aaron up for awhile and then tried chasing for about a lap.

To slow to catch Aaron, so when I looked over and saw Paul V out in front thought "hey he's already won one" on his first night out, so I waited for him. I got a good whack for my effort and I think both of us spun. Now once I got going again and my head back on Aaron was back up into third behind Ricky M & Dave T, now believe it or not I was going to try and slow Aaron again but Ricky and I made contact which was down the straight to the finish line and a bit of an anti climax.

There will be plenty of work done this week to get the car back to how it normally runs. New Plugs / Air cleaner / New Leads / Car setup.

Finally well done to 61 Tim Nicholls and 26 Lance Randell for making it. I know lance had a bit of bad luck but all looks well for his next night. Tim looked like he was have a bit of fun if only a bit loose.