NSW STATE TITLES JULY 2017

SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK

I PUT IN an interesting and very enjoyable weekend at the Sydney Motorsports Park meeting early last month. Through my good mate Hammo at Sinclair Ford I met Scott Reed, a lovely bloke who owns a very interesting car, the Mestengo Trans Am Mustang. The long and short of it is that I got to sample the sports sedan action behind the wheel of Scott’s Trans Am.

Once on board my first impressions were that it’s very American (left-hand drive of course) and for a big car the driver’s cockpit space was quite narrow and confined and you sit way back from the windscreen. It felt a bit like being in a submarine (I’m totally guessing there – never been in one). Once you got going, though, you didn’t notice it and the driving position was just right.

It has a really nice engine. Plenty of performance on tap. I had a blast with some terrific on-track battles with good drivers in some very cleverly engineered cars. No paint blemishes, just close racing. I’m quite a fan of the sports sedan class and its professionalism.

The Trans Am’s handling is still a work in progress though, with the car having only had one race outing prior to that weekend. The Peter Doulman Automotive guys did some great work preparing the car and making some changes for me. In the end getting the right handling balance eluded us during the meeting – there was still too much understeer for me to carry the kind of corner speed I wanted. That could be all sorted with track testing time away from the pressures of an actual race meeting. I’m grateful for the excellent work that Dave Kelly and Simon Copping did on the car in challenging circumstances. It was a bit rude though, that Simon, also competing in the class, insisted on beating me in the races. Where’s the respect these days?

Thanks to everyone for a great weekend and congratulations to Jack Perkins on his usual classy performance in John Gourlay’s Audi Chev.