We had the privilege of racing at the brand new Eastern Creek track in NSW on Saturday the 12th March.
This just built 70 million dollar facility is world class and will produce some amazing racers over the years. The stadium holds 7000 plus people and on the weekend they filled the place having 7000 people there for opening night – totally amazing.
Considering no one had ever raced there before we had a great run – the track is big and fast with attainable speeds of about 140km per hour. With 61 sprint cars entered (which is a lot) I was hoping to make the A Main and was very happy to achieve that goal.
Time trials were good – I had plenty of space around me and found a comfortable line where I could do clean laps. It went well qualifying 2nd fastest in my group with an 11.9, the fastest time being an 11.7.
The crew did an excellent job with the setup as the car felt good and easy to drive, not bad considering no one knows what the setup is there as it’s never been raced before. My time placed me 8th fastest overall which I was really pleased about.
Heat 1 I started from 3rd place as the top 4 were inverted due to someone crashing in qualifying and hitting the fence. They lost a heap of time in the program which meant the officials had to drop a heat on us to get the program back on track. I managed a good start but in turn 4 washed up a little high and went back a spot. I was all over the guy in front of me and was faster than him but just couldn’t find a way past him so finished 4th.
With my qualifying and heat race result I was sitting 8th overall in points, meaning I made it into the dash (not bad at all for me given that this show was only my 30th ever race in a Sprintcar, there were 61 cars racing combined with a brand new track that I have never been on before).
I started the dash from 4th making an awesome start but 2nd place didn’t move so we had to do a restart. On the second restart I did a massive wheelie as my rear tyres were right in the grippy section of the track. I gave it too much throttle so I had to get off it and by the time it came down and I got going again I had dropped back a spot. I had to settle down so my first corner wasn’t the best and I dropped back to 6th position coming out of turn 1. I caught back up to 5th but decided to sit in and try the top and the bottom lines of the track in preparation for the 35 lap feature.
Starting from 12th position in the feature I ran really wide on the first corner and nearly spun out. I just managed to hold onto it and avoid a car that had rolled over near me though I did get some minor damage to my top wing and front end. The officials got it all cleared up but because I spun I had to go the rear of the field for the restart.
We started again and I just slowly crawled back some spots throughout the race. I managed to avoid a few crashes along the way but my car was not handling the best after the incident on lap 1 – it was difficult to turn and then when I turned the car would whip around on me. I figured I must have bent the front end somewhere. With only 17 laps raced out of the 35 (due to a time curfew placed on the speedway) I was in 11th position when the race was declared.
Results Below:
Hot Laps time: N/A
Time Trials: 11.935 2nd in my group (8th overall)
Heat 1: started 3rd finished 4th
Heat 2: N/A (cancelled due to time)
Dash: 6th
B-Main: N/A
A-Main/Feature: started 12th finished 11th
Thanks to all my sponsors, family and crew for all their support and help getting me out on the race track each week.
