Wow, what a weekend. If we could even go from one extreme to other, I think we've knocked it over at round one. On the week leading into the season opener at Wakefield Park, we were subject to not one but two trips to Melbourne in 3 days only to have the car all sorted and dropped the car at the track on the way back on Friday morning (running short on time), returning to Sydney to pick up everything needed for the weekend, back down to Goulburn for some shake down laps and bedding brake pads with Scotty Fleming in the drivers seat (something about not letting me drive due to lack of sleep). Everything seemed to be all systems go for the #16 Rev Doctor Motorsport/Gatorz Eyewear Racing Mazda RX7 until a bolt in the manifold decided to spoil the party and lodged itself somewhere inside the engine. Weekend over???

Well you see, for pretty much anyone other than the sister RDM car, this would seem to be the case. Not this little black duck, under strict instructions to return to the hotel for some much needed sleep by Mr. Fleming, Scotty and Cam Glegg towed the car back to the RDM (Rev Doctor Motorsport) workshop in Hornsby to prep and fire up the #58 RDM Mazda RX7. Normally not a large job at the best of times, however, the #58 car had been stripped down for maintenance and the complete rear end, rear shocks and complete exhaust system had made it's way into the #16 car prior to headed south for round 1, also the RDM boys had the gearbox out of the car for a ratio change after a successful Bathurst campaign.

So the task for the night after returning to the workshop at 7pm dropping off the #16 Mazda RX7 and collecting the #58 Mazda RX7 from Hornsby Heights, was to swap over from car to car the complete rear end components, rear shocks, brake lines, complete exhaust systems including rear muffler. Putting the gearbox back in with Bathurst ratio's, prepping the car and then returning to Goulburn to qualify the car in the morning. Luckily enough that I have completed some laps in this car while running in the engine way back in February otherwise I was going into qualifying without much time in this car at all.

As it turned out, I managed to qualify the car in P6 with a 1:07.9181, a little slow for the car however, two tenths faster than I've been around there before and healthy enough to start from the 3 rd row on the grid for Race 1.

Race 1, we managed to get a decent start although going from 1 st to 4 th gear off the start didn't help too much. Being a little green after an 18 months absence let a few of the bigger Commodores past and was filthy on myself cause the for next 6 laps, couldn't find a way around. Had a good battle with Scotty Bucton before being brake tested by the clown in the Wake Up Backpacker Commodore which resulted in a decent amount of damaged to front of the RDM Mazda RX7 for no reason other then to show us why he races in the V8 Ute class. Those guys seem to struggle to get the car around the circuit without damaging others so it might be a great idea to keep that shit in that class and remember that IPRA isn't V8 Ute's. There was at least 4 times that I counted that I could have punted him only to yield remembering that I was in a borrowed car. I mean, I don't know of anyone in this class that has to result in brake testing people to get by, Gold Platinum no brainer…. Congratulations… By race end we managed a disappointing 6 th place after slipping back to 9 th on laps 3 to 6.

Race 2 on Sunday came with more sleep and an action plan to get away from the crap that I was consumed by the previous day. We kicked off with a blinder of a start and chased the leaders up the hill, I remember seeing out of the corner of my eye, Gerry Murphy jumping the start but managed to pull it up before the lights went out, which still means a jump start unfortunately, luckily he wasn't pulled up for that, more sleep meant more concentration however the only blemish for me on the race was a little bump with John McKenzie who was struggling with rear end grip on the opening laps in his VZ Commodore resulting in him spinning off in the fish hook after the contact. With clear track ahead and closing on the leaders, I could put my head down and push to catch up which turned out to be not a difficult task rolling off a 1:07.4520 lap time as I closed up on the rear of Gerry Murphy (Mazda RX7) and Jack Yick (Honda Civic) in 2 nd and 3 rd respectively. Unfortunately for me, there was a decent sized accident between two of the back markers. This incident resulted in a Safety Car coming out and that's pretty much how the race ended. As it turned out, the officials weren't really fussed about Gerry Murphy's jump start but were most interested in an apparent ‘overtaking under yellow flags' incident while behind the safety car, I thought it was a little rough but I guess for getting over looked for the jump start, I'm no expert.

Race 3 on Sunday afternoon and we only had our sights set on the Green and Black Mazda RX7 of Brown just ahead. Another good start and slipping up the inside of Jacky Yick in the Honda, it was a scene set for me and Browny. We gapped the field pretty easy and traded fastest laps through-out the duration of the race, Browny broke the lap record on lap 3 with a 1:07.0953, we broke it again on the same lap with a 1:06.9492.   By race end, the gap was at 3.4 seconds and overall, Browny had a better race and finished with maximum points, well deserved on a good weekend for him. We were pretty happy to have turned the weekend around and finished on the podium for the first time…

Next round is at Sydney 's Eastern Creek Raceway on May 23-24-25 th , hopefully the #16 Rev Doctor/Gatorz Racing Mazda RX7 will be ready to race… See you all there….

Massive Thank You to the following people -

The Team Rev Doctor guys for the loan of the #58 RDM Mazda RX7, Scott Fleming, Paul Cooney, Cameron Glegg, Matty Clarke, Paul Bartolo, Brian Troy, Les Wilson, Darvod Maranski, Izzy from SelectMaz, Anthony Rodrigues for Maztech of Melbourne, Bill Nabhan, Rebecca Liehr, Paul Mitchell for Aussie Auto Art, Sonya Fleming and to my beautiful girlfriend Karen Hagey for keeping me all together. The effort that these guys have put in to make sure we could sit on the grid for round one was unbelievable. Thanks guys, absolute LEGENDS.....

Harmo

Results Here

Qualifying

Race 1

Race 2

Race 3