BARBAGALLO RACEWRAP

If Perth was an hour and a half closer in a Qantas Bus, I reckon I could easily call Perth home. It has plenty going for it, good beaches, nice City, big river, great race circuit and equally important, great Dirt Bike riding.   

We arrived into Western Australia on the Wednesday prior to the Bigpond 400, confident after the previous round of the Championship at Hamilton in New Zealand. Wednesday was taken up with a couple of Ford appearances, a nice run along the Fremantle slipways, before taking in visits to Titan Ford on Wednesday evening and Lane Ford in Mandurah on Thursday. As always Castrol put on a VIP dinner for their valued customers held at the Perth town Hall, which was very well received and Frosty and I both had a bit of a chat on stage. Entertainment was provided by world renowned pianist David Helfgott from which the movie ‘Shine’ was based. Incredible!!!                                                                                            The Ford Performance Racing Team meanwhile dined on the scrumptious delicacies of the Hogs Breath Cafe in Mindarie.     The weekend weather was looking challenging to say the least. Forecast rain on Saturday and Sunday, which meant the Friday 2 hour practice session would prove very important in one way and potentially useless in another if it were to be wet. As it turned out, the rain did come, but we were virtually unaffected.

Practice...

With only an hour and three quarters to get it all together before qualifying on Saturday morning, naturally we have plenty of things to do during a practice session. Most of these revolve around trying things to do with the suspension to try and gain a performance edge. The Barbagallo circuit is the only circuit on the calender that we potentially don’t use 2nd gear, which makes the torque of the engine very important in the low down RPM and very important to get the cars handling working around that scenario. This time last year, the two FPR Falcons qualified in around 13th and 15th and we regarded the layout as a bit of a potential challenge to get the most from. That was 13 months ago and times have changed as the whole team have been working incredibly hard to overcome the challenges of the circuits where we have been less competitive. Practice went very well with most of the changes made having a positive impact on the cars performance. Then with new Dunlop’s fitted towards the end of the session we ended up 2nd quickest and much improved on the previous year. Frosty finished up 6th, but all was looking good for the following days qualifying session.

Qualifying...

As is the normal case at a 3 race 400 km format, qualifying is split into 3 segments. The first is for the whole field and is 20 minutes long, with the slowest 9 cars removed at the end. The next segment is for the fastest 20 cars from segment 1 and lasts for 15 minutes before the slowest 10 cars are removed, leaving the fastest 10 cars on track for the remaining 10 minutes. Both FPR Falcons made it through to the last segment, maintaining competitive lap times inside the top 5. The session had started damp, with most cars out on wet tyres. We opted for slicks after a very short time and early in the first segment the car was great. We easily managed to get to the 3rd segment and qualified in 6th position. We always aim for the front row, but you can still get a great result starting anywhere amongst the front 3 rows, so we weren’t that disappointed with the outcome. Frosty did a great job securing FPR’s second pole position in consecutive rounds.

Race 1...

With no inkling of rain on the horizon, race 1 got underway. I made a capable getaway to hold 6th position into turn 1. The safety car was out immediately due to an incident between Michael Caruso, Jason Bright and Murph, but racing got underway after 3 laps. We were fast enough, although the cars ahead were slowing us up a little, a good pitstop strategy was called for and on lap 10 we pitted and the FPR team ‘blazed’ a 3 second dead stop. This gave us an effective 3 position gain by the time we had a few laps clear track and everyone else had pitted. This meant that we were around 3 seconds back from Garth Tander. Slowly but surely we managed to claw back the time and by lap 30 we were on his tail. His car was a fraction slower than mine as it appeared that his Dunlop tyres were wearing faster than mine, but he was slightly faster in the right areas for me not to be able to have a crack at passing him. That was until around 3 laps from the end when he locked a front tyre at turn 1. But it was still not enough to affect a pass. In the end we finished in 4th place which gave us a good platform to move forward again in race 2 and 3. Frosty had a great run, comfortably winning for FPR in the Orrcon Falcon.

Race 2...

The Castrol FPR Falcon got off the line really well, but had to concede to Garth Tander who was on the inside line before slotting in behind. Skaifey was slower to get away and found himself on the rubble around the outside of turn 1. This allowed me up the inside of him into the turn two kink. Knowing that he was level with my LH rear I gave him as much room as possible, but he bounced off the small kerb on the exit and bounced into the LH rear of car 6, turning me towards the inside wall, which caused a spin and crunched the number 2 Toll HRT car hard into the wall. Somehow luck was with me and I managed to avoid everything, walls, cars and gravel. The safety car was deployed and I managed to remove the car from the gravel and get back to the pits to replace a flat tyre and damaged rim and resume on the same lap. Isn’t it great when luck goes your way!! It could have been much worse. When the race got back underway we maintained a steady pace toward the front of the pack. The car had suffered some suspension damage in the fracas with the number 2 Toll HRT Commodore, but was performing unbelievably well considering. We were able to pass heaps of cars and the Teams pitstop was again excellent. By race end we managed to claw back up to 9th position, not bad. Sometimes your most memorable races aren’t necessarily the ones you win… This was one of those. Meanwhile at the front Frosty took a great win.

Race 3...

This race was always going to be tough for us. Within the melee that was Race 2 we had destroyed two of our 12 tyres. This meant that we did not have a great selection of Dunlop tyres to use for the final race. The strategy was to go long, gain clear track, do our stop and resume in front of some of the cars we were competing against. The start was pretty good, but I had nowhere to go. It’s only a short distance to the first corner at Barbagallo and not much advantage can be gained there. We maintained good pace early on, and when everyone else pitted, the Castrol FPR Falcon pressed on in an effort to gain clear track and try and jump a few of the cars ahead of us. It almost worked and after our stop we came out right on the hammer of three cars battling for 5th position. I managed to get by James Courtney and was right on the back of Rick Kelly, but didn’t quite get him at race end, finishing in 7th place. Frosty won the race and took a commanding result, moving him up to 3rd in the Championship. Second position for the weekend went to Garth Tander, followed by Jamie Whincup. We also moved up in the standings one place to 5th with a good bagful of points. The weekend was reasonable considering the circumstances. The car was really competitive at Barbagallo and it is a circuit that last year we may have considered one of the weaker tracks for our cars performance.

Next up...

We're off to Sandown in Melbourne. Usually Sandown hosts the first of the traditional enduro events the Sandown 500. Not this year though as we have the same format as Barbagallo. Our cars were strong there last year for the 500 and we have made significant in roads since then. Looking forward to it.

See you at the track.

Richo.