I was tempted to take the 3litre Brab for this race as it does seem to be the sweetest handling car, but old habits die hard and the Honda lured me away with promises of huge BHPs
I found that the setup was not quite right in qually and the car had some nasty little wobbles at a few places around Bathurst. I tried a few things to improve matters and posted a lucky lap that just pinched pole
But I was very aware that Ronnie, Axel and Tristan + others were going to be on my tail from the start.!!!!
The first 2 laps were quite hairy on heavy fuel and cold tyres ( I had overfilled the Waza by about 7 galls I discovered at the end of the race
) with Ronnie looking to poke his Brab down the inside at every opportunity. Axel and Tris were also in close attendance and ready to pounce on any mistake......... so I made one!
Just slightly outbraked myself at the end of the straight and was trying to leave room for Ronnie as he had vanished from my mirrors and could be right where I did not want him....alongside. The clunk against the outside armco sounded bad, but the Honda shrugged it off and I was able to give chase after Tris and Ronnie ( Axel had gone missing somewhere?)
I was able to close the gap slowly as R & T disputed the lead, but I still had some strange stability issues with the Honda, even on the main straight it wanted to weave about ( the answer became obvious later!!). Then Ronnie appears to have got carried away at the end of the straight and gone looking at armco on the escape road, so Tris was alone up front and no-one to hassle him. I pressed as hard as I dared and the gap was maybe closing, but certainly not growing despite the instability at some points.
Eventually I was caught out as I dropped down through the rocks to blast out onto the straight with all those lovely BHPs and I managed a 180 spin without hitting anything!! That takes real skill in my book
This dropped me out of sight of Tris and probably made 2nd the best I could expect.
But, as the fuel level dropped and the car got lighter the handling improved dramatically and my speed increased, proving that my problems were ride height or spring rate related and the car was simply bottoming out on race fuel............should have thought of that??!!
For the last few laps I was closing on Tris but I suspect that he had things under control and knew that he did not need to risk anything to take the win, but I was close enough that just one mistake from tTristan would have made things interesting lol.
Grats to Tristan on the win and commiserations to those who did not survive.
Then I was in a blind spot and had to spin the car back to face the right direction but fortunately I had a safe gap on prib back to 4th spot.