The day after the muster.

Hi all,

No after muster poetry here, just the state of the event through Crabbe coloured glasses.

We had a very ordinary night, heat one had us fast asleep off pole, poor gear selection and poor car set up saw us go from pole to 4th by the end of the race.
Heat two had us about where we should have been during the first heat with set up but still not quite where we should have been, started last, passed a few cars but still we had a poor run.
The feature saw us starting off of position 8 with the 8 320's half a lap ahead, so really we started out of position 16, I got away well and the car got hooked up, some laps at a moderate speed to try out the lines and then we gassed it, we were lapping well and pulling in the leaders slowly, then Anthony King had a coming together with another car and ended up in the wall, the reds came on and I thought "beauty, we will restart nose to tail".
Somehow I ended up starting from 7 on the restart so had made up 9 positions to that point.
At the greens I had to try and round up Carolyne, I had passed her just before the reds came on but after unwinding a lap I was relegated back behind her, Carolyne had her foot on the gas but kept running low out of turn 4 and lost some drive there on a few occasions, so around the outside I went, we stayed a bit higher than most and passed most of the cars in the feature around the outside.
Finally in the last lap I got by Darren Francis, now Darren and I go back to the first muster I ran, that year I got stuck behind him and Mick Doble got by me for the feature win, last year I pulled a somewhat shaky pass on him going into turn 3 for the last time that almost had both of us in trouble, so it was good to go by him, I really wanted to get a couple more laps in as Gibbo in his 320 was still ahead of me, and I have just got to beat him one day.
So we finished in track position 5, 3 limiteds and 1 320 in front of me, those poor heat finishes really cost me.

Well done to Tim King for the feature win, he was quick.

Overall points winner was Mick Doble, Mick is undoubtedly the man to beat this year and we hope to be putting some more pressure on him over the next 2 months leading into the state title.
The Davis boys are slowly getting back on track, Todd had his motor working well and just needs the laps now to get back up to front.
Gavin is reporting in every couple of days from his Middle Eastern pipe fixing job and tells me he will be back by the first week of February, and should be able to get his car ready to do a couple of meetings before the state title.

Dhuy still is having dramas with his engine, Bernie Cook and Ian had a chat long into the night discussing why an engine continues to burn out plugs and pistons.
Dhuy had the services of the Watson's Express house car and like me has not yet got used to an engine that actually makes power and how much more difficult that can be to drive, but all of us were glad to see Ian out there at last getting some laps in, and he was stoked just to get the laps in unscathed, but disappointed that he did not go a bit better.

After the feature Carolyne and I had a chat about what we have come to know as "Tail tank blindness".
Now I am the first to admit that I suffered from this disorder for a long time, this year I have tried so hard to find new lines to run, I have gone higher and higher learning the craft of being able to move around on the track to enable a passing maneuver to be done, with out the need to slow down, once you have slowed up you are stuck at the same speed as the car in front and have to wait for a mistake to happen to get by.
I first became aware of this at Geraldton last year, during a heat race Carolyne was on my tail and I saw her put her nose up the inside for a few laps, I was holding her up with a poor drive and eventually moved up and slowed to let her through, after the race I went over to have a chat and Rickster was giving her a talk about following other cars tails, it was as if a light was switched on for me, I realised that I was worse than Carolyne by a long way, this year we have really tried to use the momentum that puts you on another cars tail to get you by, it has been slow but by the end of the year we are expecting all of this to make us a faster team next year.
You can work out which drivers suffer from this easy, we are the ones who go hard from the front and drive fast, then when we run from inside the pack we tend to not move forward.
Take my advice drivers and forget about running on someones tail, it may take a while to get the hang of it and you will most definitely go slower to start, but it will pay dividends in the long run.
Of course none of this applies if it is a one lane track but even if you try it on a one lane track and you go backwards at least you are trying.

Some of you may have read my blog some time ago about sabotaging your own team.
So I have a quiz for you with a prize for the first person to respond with the correct answer.
Family and friends of the guilty team may not enter this competition.

Which team in the 320/limited feature failed to finish due to them filling their fuel tank with unleaded fuel?
Prize is a voucher for $50.00 from Parr Motorsports.

Happy new year all.