NEWS

April 1999

Hi Everyone

The Winternationals at Willowbank, QLD is one of the biggest drag race meetings of the year. Some 40,000 people made the pilgrimage this year to witness 530 entries battle it out. We were one of 17 Top Doorslammers entered and 13 starters, trying for the quickest 8 spots in order to get a run in the eliminations. We had 4 qualifying sessions to achieve it.

Qualifying Round 1 - Friday night. All the supercharged racers were suffering tyre shake. We lined up in the RH lane. The tree was partly obscured by the door post so I bent my head to the side to stage. Rob Broadbent was along side me in his Commodore with the big McGee DOHC job and Whipple blower. He was creeping through the lights so left early on a red light only to break the A bar securing the top of the diff to the chassis. The rear then turned the car hard right (yes, into my lane!) so I had to back off immediately. He missed me by a car length or so I was pleased he left early otherwise he may have hit me. The best thing to come out of the run was my best ever 60' time of 1.001 seconds.

Qualifying Round 2 - Saturday afternoon. The air was good and the track warm. Unfortunately we suffered tyre shake at the top of first and I had to peddle it to get going smoothly again. The groove was narrow so it was easy to move out of it, particularly if you had a bit of tyre shake. The car started moving around on the track from about 300' and just grazed the 1000' marker causing the run to be disallowed. I recorded a 6.49 @ 218mph, which I was happy with even though it didn't count towards qualifying.

Qualifying Round 3 - Saturday evening. The air was real good now (showing 500' below sea level) so we dropped the blower overdrive and richened the mixture up a bit to tame it down. It didn't make much difference to the power - we got tyre shake at the top of first again peddled and rocketed through (straight!) for a 6.50 @ 220 mph. This made us 3rd quickest qualifier with the fastest speed so far.

Qualifying Round 4 - Saturday night. The air was still good but the track was cold. We hung back in the staging lanes and didn't run, deciding 4th qualifier was as good a place as any to be.

Sunday Eliminations...

There was a long delay prior to my race because of an oil down. I was up against Peter Kapiris in 'the other' Studebaker who seemed unusually nervous for a seasoned racer. Sitting in the car looking down the track for over 30 mins, while my lane was cleaned up and prepared, seemed to stuff up my concentration. When it came time to go I wasn't fully switched on and popped out an ordinary burnout. Kapiris was in the right lane (restricted viewing and nervy) and went straight into full stage - this gave me 20 seconds or so to be fully staged. I thought I was closer to the lights than I actually was so crept slowly forward but the pre stage light wouldn't come on. Running out of time, I crossed the pre-stage beam and tried to bring my stage revs up as I went into full stage. The result was I didn't really give myself any time to get the revs up in a stopped position. To cap it off I launched at higher revs than normal and with a slow reaction time. Basically it was a stuff-up. I may have got away with it but the RH rear axle spline stripped itself where it connects to the diff moving all the drive to the left wheel and sending the car sharply to the right. It was safe because Kapiris had gone and I was able to back off and steer the car back into my lane.

Naturally, we were all disappointed but really happy with our achievement over the weekend.

Looking back.....

Our last drag racing meeting of the season is now over and we can look back and reflect on the achievements over the past year. It is amazing to think it was just 12 months ago when we first ran the Moonshine Bandit at Ravenswood at a crappy street meet. At that time all we had, apart from the race car, were borrowed tools, a basic car trailer (also borrowed) and very little experience as to what we had to do to run the car at all, let alone to be competitive. After only two months of being licensed we run 6.44 @ 214, the quickest Doorslammer pass in WA for the whole season and third fastest ever. Three months later we knock off the Australian champion Victor Bray.

I have a lot to be grateful for, a great car, a loyal talented hardworking crew and a first season that many drag racers could probably only dream about.

The 1999/00 season starts in October and we will be good and ready to take them all on again, only this time having some idea of what we're doing and some experience under our belts. Who knows what we may achieve.

Regards,

Robin