TARGA B POINTS AFTER 2 ROUNDS

Mark Perry 266
Bob Hadley 195
JOHN BRIGGS 181
Ross Marsden 168
Shane Bond 167
Yogi Burghart 147
Adam Beechy 144
Leigh Finlayson 124
Michael Nichols 117
Neville Haines 96
Scott Waters 94

Hopefully I can afford to do the whole series. While I havent got the outright speed to fight for a win yet, reliability and consistency are the key.

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Id like to publicly thank Stuart Benson at Benson motor sport for all his help so far. In fact if it wasn't for his help in variety of ways, Id still be waiting in the wings.

CABLE MATE in Chesterman st, Derwent Park, need a cable mate? Thanks for the cables, and the advice!!

Mum and Dad. Dad IS my crew and it goes without saying without him I wouldn't be here. Mum has donated some cash that she insists I have, even though I tell her to spend it on herself.

Peter at Thomsons Welding in Lampton Ave, Derwent park for the welding done on the roll cage.

Thanks also to the secret society. You know who you are!!

The Examiner Artical

Artical Copyright The Examiner Newspaper

Like a Virgin April 1 2007 (Symmons Plains)

Id been looking forward to running at Symmons for a long, long time. I never got around to it when I raced the Hunter. It wasnt looking good this time either. Im pretty broke right now. Thanks to mum and dad otherwise Id be even worse off. They dont have mega dollars to give me but every little bit helps (even a few bucks from some silent friends, you know who you are. Wink!!)For this meeting we replaced the intercooler with a bigger one.
In the end we decided to go up on the Saturday to get some practice. I arrived about 2pm and waited my turn. When that turn came I started to wonder if I was doing the right thing. The track wasnt how I expect and I felt abit nervious. Well, the car must of too because on the first lap one of the intercooler pipes came off. So I spent 20mins or fixing that and went out for another go. This time the track didnt seem so bad. I wasnt on my race tyres, saving them for the racing and drove round on street tyres just to get used to the place. So every lap I did it got easier and I thought maybe I am cut out for this after all.

Qualifying was an unknown. I was 7th for race 1. We made up one place to finish 6th. I felt abit out gunned. Race 2 then was abit different. I got a ripper start and was 4th for most of the race having started a day long duel with Ross Marsden in another GTS skyline. He got by me on the last lap. His thing was quicker down the straights and I was slightly better in the turns.

Race 3 and tha battle continued. Another great start and I was up to 4th, then found myself in 3rd when one of the front runners spun. I was hoping he would catch up but he before the end. Marsden caught and passed and then thought he'd do a little dance in the sand. This handed me 4th place. I set my fastest lap of the day at 1.06.830.

The final race of the day brought mixed results. The brake rotors had been warping all day and were pretty bad in the last race. I wasnt able to brake very well at all.
I held 4th place for 80% of the distance but the car started to misfire which was a sign it was over heating. I had to back off and let just about everyone pass till it cooled down. But the main thing is we survived to fight another day.
Its now back to Baskerville on the 27 of May for round 3. A few things need to be down before then, and hopfully extract some more power too. Bye for now!!
P.S We found ourselves in The Examiner newspaper too!!


Photos Copyright David Clifford

Let The Games Begin Feb 25 2006 (Baskerville)

A new year and the start of a new and for me full season (if the buget allows)
Another fine day (bit too hot actually). A few changes to the classes mean that some of the quicker cars from Targa A were brought back to Tagra B. Now the Targa class was born not long ago mainly for Targa Tas cars that had nowhere else to go. The classes (A, B and C) are based on min lap times allowed. For TA, its open, TB its 61sec at both Symmons and Baskerville. TC its 63sec at Baskerville and 66sec at Symmons. TC is also based on engine capacity up 3300cc. There are penalites for going under those times and I think you get moved up a class if you do it more than twice(I think).

Anywho, on to the races. We had made some more changes to the car, mainly suspension. Added adjustable camber arms to the rear and fixed ones to the front. Oh, and fitted a 3'' exhaust!!
I qualified 6th for race 1 and finished 4th. A couple of the front runners fell of the track which is not where you want to be. I set a new best of 1.03.291 on lap 2. I seem to go better at the start of the race, which could be in part to the standard computer and my inconsistence.

Race 2 I made a pretty good start and was actually 3rd for a few corners till we got to the infamous Baskerville hill. I cant remember this race, I finished back in 6th.
Race 3 wasnt a good one. I was running 6th and finished 9th after spinning on the last lap trying to past a laped car. Wasnt his fault, I flashed my lights and he gave me heaps of room, I just stuffed up.

Race 4 (final)
I worked my way back to 6th and was having some good dicing until I got a tap from behind which ruffled my feathers. I got stuck behind a car and then was takin by my "tapper" so I did a stupid things and tried to return the favour which resulted in the car overheating. So I backed right off and finished 11th. That put me 6th for the day.

DOH!!

Excuse my photo editing. I think my logo is a different size on every photo LOL

The Second Coming Dec 2-3 2006 (Baskerville)

The final round for the year (Tas Super Series by the way) was a very good meeting personally. We hadnt really done much to the car since Oct but we set a new best time and finished on the podium, 3rd outright for the day. To say I was happy is like saying the sun is bright.

But before we get to that, the day before I was involved with the x-mas ride days for Camp Quality. It was a joy to take some youngsters for a spin that dont have an easy time battling cancer. The only downer was that the weather wasnt the kindest so we couldnt give them as big a thrill as we all would of liked. But I think they enjoyed it none the less.


So onto the races. Dry day (thank you know what!!) I forgot to check tyre pressure before Qual and the car was all over the place and we had a spin in turn 1 on my first flying lap. Wasnt time to call in a fix it so I continued on. Ended up 4th on the grid in front of a few I was behind last time. R1 was a straight forward affair, finished 3rd. I was pretty happy. R2 I blew the start a bit and was 4th but quickly took 3rd and stayed there.


R3 was more hard fought. Had a ding dong battle with the Evo you can see it the pics. I let my guard down and he got me on the last corner on the last lap to take 3rd form me. I was mad at myself.

R4 saw another swaping of positions between me and the Evo with me coming off second best again. At that point I thought Id missed out on 3rd for the day, but as I said was very happy to find out otherwise. It was my first motorsport award.

Photos Copyright David Clifford
All these and more can be viewed at Smugmug. See the link.

The Story So Far

Finding a place to start this story is a difficult one. So I will being with a quick history lesson.
I first started racing at age 20,way back in 1989. I raced my modest street car, a Hillman Hunter with a GT motor. It was pretty slow to start with, I only got to race at Baskerville, near Hobart. I started off doing 1min20sec lap times and finished 4 years later doing 1.08's. Compared with the pace setters who were doing 1.02's. Not bad for a car that wasn't build for speed. A crash while testing in 94' ended the Hunter days and Ive had to wait 12 long years to be back to doing what I love. In the mean time Ive had to content with computer games with Sim's like GTR, rfactor, Nascar Racing etc. None of which, I might add, even come close to the real thing.

Fast foward to 2005. My first trip to Bathurst. Not to watch the 1000, but to drive the circuit, something I had wanted to do for years. I didnt want to leave. I lost count of the amount of times I went round. As I was going round, I was saying to myself, "I have to race here, someday, in anything".

Which leads us today.... almost. I was looking for a car to start racing again and was put in contact with Stuart at Benson Motorsport. He helped me get a car which we got in Jan 06' and started racing at club days before the first race meeting in Oct 06'.

The First Meeting Oct 14-15 2006 (Baskerville)

Having not done a hell of a lot of modifying to the car, I didnt know what to expect. Apart from the safety area like roll cage, harness etc we had lowered the car, added a strut bar, pod style air filter, reset the computer, changed engine oil, brakes and rotors and thats about it.
There wasnt a big field to race against, infact only 6 cars (4 Tagra B, 2 Targa C more on this later) Im Targa B. It was a 2 day meet, Baskerville hosting the IP nationals (improved production). Saturday was, sadly, wet so my first race back was wet. Great start. I started 4th and finish 2nd....last but 4th in my class. I just sat and spun the wheels of the line, was past by everyone, repasted to 4th then spun.


Race 2 went better and in the dry (as was the rest of the weekend) and we finished 4th. In fact we finished 4th in all 4 of the days races. We ened up with a best time of 1.04.302.



Photos Copyright MOREY PHOTOGRAPHY