31st October – 1st November

Well the last ever race at Oran Park has come and gone, the next big event for the Iconic Oran Park Raceway will be the opening of a Housing Estate.

In my last report prior to this round we were in a race against time to have the Rx7 mechanically ready for this event, however with a lot of hard work by the team, we arrived on the Friday 30th October for practice and set up. After the first session, it was obvious that the Rx7 still had a lack of power, this continued unresolved into Saturday’s qualifying. Nevertheless I was still able to put the car into 2nd place on the front row of the grid but the lack of vehicle speed was obvious to all.

A few changes to timing and other adjustments prior to Race 1 only proved to be a backward step dropping me back to 4th at the chequered flag. While this was enough for to secure the NSW State title, I was very frustrated with the problems.

The team worked late into Saturday evening, we reset the timing and concentrated our efforts on the fuel delivery system.  We were suspicious of a newly replaced fuel pump, on close inspection we noted that the specifications of the replacement fuel pump was slightly different to the original. We made adjustments to the fuel pick up point, feeling a little more confident we had to wait until Sunday’s race to confirm our findings.

Race 2,   I started 4th on the 2nd row of the grid, when the flag dropped I instantly  knew  we had found the missing horse power, two laps later I took the lead from the hard charging Graham Watts in another Rx7 to finish the race in 1st place.

Securing the Championship was one thing but winning the last, ever Improved Production Race meeting at Oran Park was something I was determined to do. This time starting from pole position for Race 3, it was very close into the first corner with Graham Watts really challenging me, but I put my head down and began to pull out a solid lead finally finishing the race in 1st with an 8 second margin.

I would like to thank my team members, sponsors, supporters, officials, the NSW IPRA Club and competitors for a great seasons racing.

There is now only one more challenge ahead for RBR Team for 2009 and that is the National Championships at Phillip Island on the 21/22 November, 2009.

Ryan.

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