TAKING IT TO THE LIMIT
THEY call Matt Haines ‘Hollywood’, but he’s about the most un-hollywood bloke you’ll ever meet. After hurting the bearings on a brand new engine for his Skyline just weeks before Racewars, Matt refused to give up and ordered the parts he needed while he was on site doing his FIFO gig. Once he’d flown home again, he got stuck straight into repairs.
Thankfully, the crank and block damage was minimal, so after the engine block, head, oil lines, oil pump and dry-sump tank were flushed to remove any bearing material, the motor was reassembled, and dropped back into the car around 11:30pm the Thursday night before the event.
“After four or five hours’ sleep that night I woke up somewhat fresh and had the task of finishing off the car, starting it, running it in, packing the Patrol, and heading to Albany that night,” Matt said. “I started the car up around 7pm on the Friday night and took it for a five-minute drive to make sure there were no leaks or unusual noises. Success!”
Success is an understatement. Matt had the fastest speed of the event (324.32km/h) right up until late Sunday afternoon, when John Kopcheff’s twin-turbo Lamborghini Gallardo pipped him by just 0.65km/h. Matt did end up with the quickest ET of the event, covering the 1000m in a blistering 17.925sec, while the Lambo was almost a second behind at 18.979. Driving into a fairly stiff headwind, the Gallardo’s aerodynamics came to the fore to snatch the victory away from Matt, but he was more than stoked to finish second.
classes: RWD, AWD and Outlaw (for the more race-oriented machines). The winner of the RWD and AWD classes battled it out to see who would take home the larger portion of the 60/40 split of the $3300 purse!
Once the dust had settled and the gravel had stopped bouncing, it was Brook Gunning and his XE Falcon that took the win over Rikki Mclaughlan’s WRX – a big surprise considering how loose the startline surface was.
In the Outlaw class, Peter Selby’s awesome Charger took home the cash after edging out Stephen Adams in his VK Commodore. It was dark, it was windy and it was cold, but it was a pretty cool way to finish off a big day of racing.
There’s no doubt the Racewars crew are onto a good thing by moving down to Albany. The airport is only 10 minutes out of town and there is plenty to see and do in the area, including the Mt Barker wine region just 50km up the road – so there’s no excuse for not taking the missus. The only small issue with the venue is that it is an active airport that has to be shut down for the weekend, although the flying doctor still needs access during emergencies. This caused a bit of a delay on Saturday morning with no regular racing happening until almost lunchtime, but once the lanes were opened, the cars cycled through very quickly and people got plenty of passes in. There were no accidents and no major engine failures that oiled down the track, so the racing was continuous with very little delay between runs.
According to event director Jonathan Murray, this year’s Motul Racewars brought somewhere between $1.5 and $2 million into the region. Deputy Mayor Greg Stocks even came down for a look and jumped into Jamie Paolucci’s M3 for a quick 240km/h blast down the runway. He was suitably impressed, both with the high-speed blat and how well the event was run, and it appears he’ll be more than happy to support future Racewars events.
Plans are already in place for a Great Southern Motorplex not far from the airport, so the success of events like Racewars can only add support and lend validity to the fact that there is a need for a purpose-built motorsports venue. Let’s hope the government gets behind it so that we’ve got even more reasons to head down to Albany.