Richo's Bahrain Race Wrap

This was our 3rd visit to the Middle Eastern Island of Bahrain. Bahrain is located off the Northern Coast of Saudi Arabia, connected by a huge 25km causeway. Progress and development are staggering. Each year the Island gets bigger as more and more land is reclaimed to build Resorts, Hotels, Buildings and infrastructure.

 It has a population of around 600,000 people and almost resembles what I would see as some sort of lunar landscape. The people are friendly and the whole V8 Supercar fraternity are very well looked after. The Desert circuit is something to behold as I am sure most of you may have seen on the TV. It has been a very happy hunting ground for FPR for the last two years, claiming round victory on both occasions. We arrived into Bahrain on the Tuesday evening with a few little promotional events to undertake and some time to get rid of a bit of Jet lag. The best thing about the Bahrain circuit is that it is incredibly wide. “What does this mean”? I hear you ask, passing and lots of it. The beauty is you can throw it down the inside of someone without having to much to worry about and because the track is so wide, it gives plenty of time for others to see you coming and take action against contact. Of course most times contact occurs, but to no real avail.

The fight for the Championship title is getting hot. Three guys are really now all that are in the running, Jamie Whincup, Frosty and GT, and post Bahrain there seems to be some patterns forming. Bahrain was an important round for all three and clearly coming out the other side of Bahrain it may appear a bit elementary for the last couple of rounds, but believe me anything can happen at either Tassie or Oran Park. There is also the Teams Championship. We are a little bit behind the Triple 8 guys, but it is still very possible for us to come out with a win. With the usual 3 race 130 km format, the action promised to be pretty hot. Each race had a compulsory pitstop to change a couple of Dunlop’s and with mild mid 20 degree temps promised, the cars were expected to be quick. One thing about the Bahrain track surface is that it lacks a fair amount of grip compared to some of the other places that we race throughout the season. This creates a few headaches in practice as it is very difficult to get a good direction on where to head once the tyres get around 10 laps old. That means of course when we try things to make the cars go better it is very difficult. The quick times come when we fit brand new tyres and they have a 3 tenths of a second advantage for one lap. This is of course the one event on the calendar that we practice Thursday, qualify Friday and Race on Friday and Saturday as this is the weekend in the Arab countries.

Practice went OK with Frosty in second position, while I was back in tenth with a little bit of time to make up, but confident or getting up a few positions in qualifying. Three qualifying legs later on Friday morning and with the track temps starting to rise, the cars developed a bit of understeer and both FPR cars ended up further back than where we had hoped. The Castrol FPR Falcon finished up in 8th and the Orrcon FPR Falcon in 9th. Race 1 was held on Friday afternoon and even though we had qualified a bit further back than we hoped, racing would be a different matter. I made a good getaway and slotted into 7th by the opening tour. It was clear from the first lap that we may be suffering from a bit of straight line speed as on the opening couple of laps I was being mowed down on the straights, which is usually a very strong point for our cars. Instead of attacking, all I could do was defend, which is very difficult on a track with a 1.2 km straight. So for a while I spent a bit of time going backwards. After it sorted itself out and we pitted for new rear Dunlop’s, away we went. Eventually we made our way forward to our starting position of 8th. Frosty was embroiled in a bit of controversy when he made very slight contact with Garth Tander, turning him around. He received a drive through penalty to finish in 21st position.

Race 2. We had found in race 1 that my engine had a hole in the radiator and was leaking fluid. This could probably explain the engine problem we had with a lack of straight line speed as the engine became quite hot. The car was much better and we were very competitive. A gun stop by the FPR team and good tyre consistency from the Dunlop tyres meant we were able to finish in 5th place. Frosty had a great run from 21st to get to 4th. Race 3 was a cracker, particularly early on. Car 6 made a great getaway and moved into 4th place. The opening laps were fantastic as we scrapped with Lowndes and then Courtney. Some changes to the car in an attempt to make it go faster were unfortunately not so complimentary which made the car handle a bit worse than expected and as the tyres got older the car slid around more. The end result was 9th for the race and 6th for the round. Frosty ended the race in 4th and 7th for the round. The best part for V8 Supercars was the races were absolute crackers for passing and racing. I really enjoy the second two races as they were great fun and being able to pass and scrap for position was excellent. From a Championship perspective, unfortunately we slipped a little further behind in the teams Championship, and Frosty the drivers Championship. The weekend was again won by Jamie Whincup from Craig Lowndes and Russell Ingall.

The next round is in Tassie at Symmons Plains in two weeks time. It has been a good circuit for us and we will be in the hunt once again.

See you at the track.

Richo.