Quote:
Originally Posted by BLUES
Recap? What's with the 20min penalty?
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Ok. Back home safely.
I am still pissed about what happened. We went out on Saturday morning and it was damp. We hit 246 and then there was an almighty bang. Fgured it was the limiter and lifted. Went around the corner and got back into it. Had a massive miss above 4500rpm. Very surprisingly we were one of only 7 people to clear the stage under the base time so no time lost.
Got out and had a look to see if i could see anything and there was a pin prick in the fuel surge tank. Nothing major but hardly ideal. Did the next stage short shifting a little and only had a few misses. Was 7th through there aswell. Stopped at the re fueling place and looked at the tank. It was a hell of a lot more than a pin prick. You could shower under it. We had 1 more stage till lunch / service. Figured we could fill up. Transport the 20km's to the next stage. Fill up again and do the stage..... Needless to say we used 65 litres to do 25km's of transport.... We stopped at the fuel service and ripped the surge tank out and re plumbed it ghetto style into the original tank. Unfortunately the 999 car passed us as we were pretty close to the last car and we missed a stage. We still drove through the stage (as an open road) and made it to lunch. Walkdens tidied up our hose job etc and we made the first stage after lunch. The thing that pissed me off was that the reason it leaked was simply a shit weld that cracked. No penetration. If you had of slipped off into a tree and cracked it then sure. No issue. It wasnt china. Anyways that night we re welded the same tank, re fitted it and it ran faultlessly... Again.
We copped a 10 minute penalty for each of the two time controls we missed. I.e the one at the start and at the end of the 1 stage. They gave us a derived time for the stage that was fair.
Anyways we decided to take it easy in the afternoon for a couple of stages which in hindsight was unecessary.
With the exception of the fuel tank the car was absolutely faultless all week.
The event is absolutely amazing. I cant speak highly enough of it. It is considerably different to something like targa west because there is no service park, no refuel zones etc. just peeps on the side of the road or in a lay by.
By the end of it though you are absolutely stuffed.
Tyre wear was very interesting. We did not get 1 drop of rain all week which is only the 2nd time in 22 years. On a couple of days the first stage was a bit damp from overnight dew but otherwise everything was dry. We took 8 yokohamas however given the events of staurday morning we elected just to run with those 4 and see what happens. We had already swapped them on the rim and front to rear but they still have heaps of tread left. If we were well inside the top 10 we probably would have taken the other 4 new ones but i thought it was great they held together so well. The guys running dunlops had massive issues. Aout half and half between dunlops and yokohamas. Rattray was running the dunlops and all 8 of his are absolutely fingered. Kennard wanted to take another 2 new ones on saturday night but the dunlop guy only had 1 so he effectively went through 9 tyres. Jim Richards went through all 8 of his michelins in his porka. Glenney went through 6 in his r35. White went through all 8 in his lambo.
A few other observations. There were 6 r35 gtr's entered. 1 is legitimately standard with a hisband wife team. They didnt put a spanner near it all week. Werent quick but probably an awesome car to do it in. The red just jap v -spec blew up. Purdey put his on its roof. Glenney was nursed through with no brakes. Sims had a few issues but nothing a trip to rullo's part bin couldnt fix. Quinn pulled out when john died. And then was Rullo.... Hell of a nice guy but reckons he spent enough on parts this week to buy another one.... He already has 5....
Our top speed from the gps was 247 all week. White in his lambo is adamant that he put a shorter ratio box in the tops out at 260. Obviously gets there a lot faster than us though.... The gtr's saw early 290's which is just silly.
Unless the lambo blows up it is unbeatable. I had a long talk with glnney who came 2nd and they were less than 1/10th of a second per k behind but imho White just goes as fast as he needs to. I saw some of his incar. Say what you want about the car but he is a sensational steerer.
Brendon