World 240 Champs - Rotorua

The week heading into this meeting was quite busy. Dad only arrived back with the Transporter last Friday after a touring the South Island with the two Ansty cars (414a and 417a) and with my car still broken from our last meeting before Christmas and Bryce only returning back from holiday the workshop was quite the hive of activity. Dad rebuilt my torque arm and we sent the diff yoke off for machining, unfortunately it only returned on Thursday afternoon so the yoke and driveshaft were removed from the new car to get mine running. Bryce was very busy getting things organized and changing his cars setup to better suit the tight Rotorua track. I on the other hand have never been to race at Rotorua so we only changed the diff gears and put bigger jets in the carburetor. We were also fortunate to use the big Mercedes tractor unit to pull the trailer as Wayne required the smaller Volvo for a specialized job up north, and boy didn't it look good! With 500+hp and huge amount of torque the trip down to Rotorua was very comfortable.

With plenty of time to spare we got to the track and unloaded the cars and went through scrutineering without any hassles. The track, seating, pits looked fantastic a real credit to the organizers and the staff. Just maybe one day another wall could be found for the results as while there is nothing wrong with using the toilet block, it just seemed odd. To the class reps walking around making sure the everyone was right and ready when required you all did a great job. Anyway from 4.30 to 5pm the track was opened up for some practice laps. I think I only made 2 laps on the green before hitting the wall the first time, going backwards. I soon realized that I needed even more revs to get out of the tight top corner, so back in the pits and we changed the diff ratio to 9.11 from 8.74, this would be the hardest I've ever revved the engine so out came the STP and into the engine it went. Back out for a quick final practice but the water truck came out in front of us making the run a bit pointless so we would have to wait for the first run to find out how the car would get on.

As my luck would have it I drew grid 3 (of 21) for my first race ever at Rotorua, hmmm good picking on my part. So after some final checks the car was ready. We watched Bryce's first heat but unfortunately he wasn't having much luck, but at least I got to watch a race and sort of see how others were driving round the track.

Race 1 - Grid 3
No matter how much you try to explain it, that feeling of 20 cars around you pulling 5, 6 thousand rpm waiting for that flag to drop has got to be one of the best things you could ever experience in your life. I don't think I breathed on the run into the first corner, and then the worst happened, everything switched off. No idea why about halfway through the first turn everything went dead. I managed to hold the car pointing the right direction hitting the wall a couple of times on my way down the back straight. Half way down the straight I realized that I didn't have time to restart the car so I applied some brakes but with so many cars behind me I knew I just had a one way ticket to off the end of the straight. Then as we entered the corner I started to shut my eyes and hold on but just then red lights came on. Wow what a sigh of relief, then after a moment I reached over and reset the switches and the car fired up again, but I think by that stage half the field had gone past. The rest of the race was good, well except around lap 9ish when I looked down to see the gear stick jumping all over the place and knowing that meant it had come loose from the bell housing. At that point you have to choices keep going or pull off. I decided that the car was still going and with coming all this way I wasn't going to stop. As soon as the race ended I pulled off switch the engine off to not make things worst while trying to change gear and using the clutch getting back into the pits.

Assessing the damaged you could see that the bolts holding the gearbox in had come loose which was incredibly bad luck as they were only lock tighted them in a few meetings prior. The result of this was that the driveshaft and bell housing had to be removed while Dad hunted the transporter for some more lock tight. Unfortunately this meant I missed the second race of my group. As I tightened the last bolt that race had completed about 3/4 distance so I only missed out by a few minutes.

Race 3 - Grid 18
Starting off almost at the rear of a big pack you can be a bit more relaxed as you know heading into the first corner you just leave you foot hard on the gas pedal and just keep pushing. The race progressed well and this time I had a bit more fun spining up a couple of cars and I did try to put someone up wall. He must have gone quite high as my wing has a few marks on it.

My biggest problem all night was not pushing as hard as I should into the corners. But to be honest I don't care, what an experience, what an awesome night.

Saturday

With both cars still running the only major work needed was to weld up Bryce's muffler and while that was happening I took a flat wheel to Mag and Turbo to be repaired. A big thanks to Robbie Maybe for opening up his workshop to all the Superstocks who ended up there. As we left and headed past Supercheap there were some girls out offering car washes for $5, but even though I wanted to stop and have them wash the cars, neither Dad or Bryce wanted to, so I was out voted. They must be to old for that kind of thing I suppose as they ended up sleeping I guess back at the Hotel while Kelly and I went for a walk into town.

Saturday Night - Finals

Our first race of the night was the repocharge, and with only the winner getting through we used the race purely as a practice as I reset the tire pressures to see if I could get the car to turn tighter through the turns.

Because the grid draw for this race was based on points I was near the rear of the field...but not last. Down went the green and off we shot. The first turn saw Bryce end up facing the wrong way with a broken suspension arm making steering impossible. Unfortunately for me I think I had made the car worst by playing with the tires as I couldn't keep tight in the turns, then a few laps later I had smoke come up into my helmet and I could hardly see anything. Not wanting to slow down on the track I dived for the infield and then on with the brakes. Once I could see I noticed smoke coming from the engine so I shut it off. Back in the pit we checked the oil, the pressure but then with a few big revs we found oil coming from a fitting that links the oil accumulator to the engine feed line, shooting onto fan then being blown back onto the exhaust.

We decided that the pits were too dirty to risk pulling oil lines off, and I only had a litre of oil which might not have been enough to replace what we would loose. So the car was loaded up and I went to watch the rest of the meeting. What a fantastic meeting it was, plenty of action, noise and excitement. Bryce however continued on and in the first heat of the "Superstocks in Paradise" he had 99r (Mark Decke) drive up and over the bonnet ripping all the fibre glass and breaking the front shock absorbers. He came back out in the second race but was having problems getting rear traction and decided that he wanted to relax and watch the final race of the 240s.

To finish up "What an awesome weekend of racing.....(except missing out on getting my car washed)".

So back home now and a few things to fix before the Auckland Champs this weekend.
Catch ya......MadPhil