discostig

Spotted me hey hahaha - yep got a bit lucky on that one! Hopefully some footage around of me at speed up the hill but see what happens I'm at 6:38 and again 11:38 if you're looking. Think it was just the two. Bonus Sprint shots! I bought 4 pics from The Sports Photo, check out the full gallery here

If I change suspension it will be to those! Was thinking a camber kit at the least though... The rear swaybar is stock, only the front is upgraded. The control blade bushes are almost certainly in need of attention too, despite being Superpro...they have been in there a while now!

Yeah Tim I was pretty happy! Definitely going in the 1000m in 2020. Unlikely to have more power. Money will go to maintenance and handling mods if anything. Last year was tune tweaking literally in the line up and we never got it down pat properly. 2017 was my last entry in to the 1000m and I think I still had 42lb injectors at that point. Don't actually know what the power level is at these days, but it's not much more than before. Should get down to the 1/4 an a cool night and see what mph it runs. I have still never beated my 11.94 @120mph from way back in 2010. Kept going down on warmish nights and the car is a couple hundred thousand kays older now too!

Thanks lads! The official Sprint album went up tonight so here's a couple more shots! Love this one Driver briefing, I'm over there on the left. Giving a fellow Ford driver a lift back down the hill after he had an injector O ring failure when he pulled up after his run. Not a good thing when fuel is pouring out the bottom of the engine bay! Probably booting along at about 130 or so here...I'm keen AF for actual video footage from the media team!

Quick colour balance play on these two - far too yellow in the originals from FB

Forgot to put these in Big thanks to Anneliese Arelette Photography for this next one https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=365433713493288&ref=br_rs

Thanks John. It took farking hours to put together and I hit back once by accident just as I finished a post. Terrible tragedy. I look forward to learning more info about how it happened so we can learn from it. Caught you all napping! Cheers dude. It's fun posting race info...I did enter Powercruise as well and drove two sessions with 2L of coolant missing. Oops. I have replaced radiator with a new (170,000km) stock unit and still need to replace water pump. Air con died and was causing 30A engine fuse to blow if I switched on the AC. New compressor about $650 fitted with regas a couple months ago! Cheers Rab. Yep but was only against a 600hp EL with turbocharged SOHC engine, think it was manual too judging from the start line skid hahaha...and that blue XB Just noticed I beat all the Holdens too. There was a Expensive Daewoo vs Ford class last year which I won - was the only Falcon or Expensive Daewoo out there lol. Never got my prize voucher actually. ACM electrical you cheap buggers!

That last crazy lap I got within 0.2 seconds of my lap 2 PB despite the slow start and skids. I think I can shave a second and a half off if I string it all together with grip the whole time, maybe 2 if it's a really clean lines lap. I'm hoping for some cool footage and action pics from the media. You can see a drone hanging around a chicane in one section, Brad Frost my mate from here and prior Racewars events was part of the media team, had a GoPro and reckoned he got some good footage of me absolutely hooking too, so fingers crossed! Bonus bits Rain setting in after my last lap - not everyone got to do 4 runs! The venerable BARRA. It's stock, officer. Start line antics Racewars Sprint video from FB Simon's incredible machine and skillset on show (he came second by less than a tenth and only get 3 runs not 4 due to rain) Metal fingers while navigating a chicane one handed at 82km/h - pro skillz

On to the best part - Hill climb vids! Lap 1 - never had a hillclimb before so racing flat out around blind corners on the wrong side of the road was unnerving, let me tell you! No interior video for this lap, sorry. Also I think the phone camera anti shake does funny things to the motion on the tight corners. Result was 1:49:39 and 17th - but the whole field hadn't run yet so I knew that my position would fall Lap 2 where increased confidence in speed, braking and layout knowledge shaved 2.3 seconds for a 1:46:76 and position 28 of 87 cars You get steering wheel and interior views this time! G forces visible thanks to the UBD in passenger door and the hard drive read head hanging by wire from the sunvisor hahaha. Speedo from laggy GPS is in bottom left. I was over 160km/h at some points along a large hillside overlooking the ocean...weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee *Thelma and Louise theme plays* Lap 3 - lets call this the 11/10ths lap, at least on chicane 3 hahaha It was very rumbly after that soft shoulder hit so I took it slower the rest of the way. I was a bit worried! Turns out once I got to the top, it was just pea gravel and dirt rolling around in the rim barrel and hitting/grinding the calipers. It poured out of the body kit hahahahaha Scoring on the rim barrel The bumper is in bad nick anyway to be honest, this is meh. Silver FTW from a distance lol The rumble was gone on the group cruise back down which was a relief. Final lap I was ginger starting out to ensure it was good at speed, then realised I could have been hitting first on exit from the chicanes...this resulted in nice wheelspin! I could probably have run 28 or 26 PSI (airstrip pressure, gripped well) in the rears instead of 30, but was worried about rolling a tyre off on a corner, so hey. Very fun final lap! Sorry the dashcam cuts out in these vids by the way. It's 5 years old now and fragile... Skids skids skids skids Final result, 33 of 87. I was hoping for mid pack like last year at the industrial estate sprint but I did much better and didn't total the car so that's a win in my book

I had an early night and headed down to Middleton Beach the next morning to see what was going to happen to the event. It is run by CAMS in conjunction with Racewars staff and is a separate event, so it went ahead. Media from the TV networks were around the public access pit area trying for interviews apparently. I didn't go looking, it was time to concentrate on the racing ahead of me and get myself ready mentally. Briefing at the base of the hill we had to contend with With that over Racers assembled in bays and the more serious ones prepped themselves in race suits etc I was glad to see my rears still had lots of grip. You can see the Nankang logo clearly still visible This nice Jag got rear ended by the VN 😞 Luckily just on the push handle Weird rim flex but OK: Time for the sighting pass! Here's a more interesting vid on the way down The real passes started and parking was a nightmare upon return to the pits. I had to pull in a random bay and wound up between the Wyldcat Racing boys when they parked at their marquee. They weren't super happy with the marshalling of cars! Perfect time for an awkward pic. Pics while waiting at the top (The National ANZAC Centre car park). We got sent in groups of 30, two groups would go up and then convoy back down again all at once.

Sunday arrived and the 1000m solo runs were first up. Jose in the ITP Supra set a national record of 338km/h, and about ten minutes later Willall Racing beat it with 351km/h. Jose in his blue Supra later had a fairly big off after his chute failed to open. The car runs small brakes up front to fit the front runner wheels so there was no way he could stop in time. He was somewhat injured but he survived relatively unscathed from what I understand. Very lucky. Then the worst case scenario happened. As I said, I didn't race in the VMAX on Sunday, and the airstrip event was halted completely after a second big solo crash in which someone paid the ultimate price, though we only found out how bad it was later that night. Not something you ever want to see happen and no amount of thoughts and prayers will bring him back. His family and friends left behind will be in a very dark place right now. The day wound up early as you'd expect, so not much else to say on Sunday's events.

Also visited the National ANZAC Centre that night solo and quietly got some history in: You can hop on and aim these guns using the hand winders by the way. This next gun was VERY easy to move using the tiny brass winder handle as big as a thumb on a circular path of maybe 10cm diameter. I'm talking single finger, barely had to push it and it rotated a degree or two! Even the big cannon only took a bit of effort on the wheel to alter pitch. Impressive engineering. As Luke said, we do our best engineering when we are trying to kill each other. Grabbed dinner in town and wandered around a bit Wait a second, what's this? Someone is famous! Time to blackmail them now that they have a public image to uphold (lol yeah right)

Looking back at 2017 results I got 229.30km/h over 800m and 241.40 over the 1000m, so that year I picked up 12.1km/h in the final 200m. Going from my 242.59km/h over 800m and guesstimating for increased wind resistance at higher speeds I might have grabbed another ten km/h with another 200m this year, which would put me at 252km/h. I'm not sure why I didn't spend the extra $75 on VMAX (again). Would have been nice to have a real number...see if it returns next year. Anyway back to the pics IATs were up at 67° at one point. Bonnet up and a wait between runs saw them get as low as 33° for me. Factory intake and stainless cold side pipe around engine to stock crossover problems...I found that ten degrees seemed to rob me of about 5km/h - hard to really judge without identical launch and shift points though This 335 was FAST. I shouldn't have rolled on easy hahaha This Stagea not so much A few videos up next. Forgot to switch on dashcam this year and used phone to watch intake temps mostly: How the fronts looked at the end of the day! Took the evening to get some pics of the car out and about in Albany too The hill I was looking forward to tackling on Monday:

They sat in storage for about 24 hours...heaps of room! Now, I left work early at 4pm Friday arvo so I could make the 4.5 hour (!) drive down that night. Not wanting to be punched in the head by a wheel and tyre combo if I had an off on the way down, I discovered that you can fit 3.8 race tyres in the boot of a Falcon. One in spare well and one slightly poking through the 60% fold seat, with double seatbelts buckled across it just in case. Finally fuelled up and all stickers on I left the suburbs at 6:30pm for the long drive down... <scene missing> The next morning it was a wheel change in the driveway of the accommodation, empty the car and head on down to the airstrip to meet up with the other two tragic fools from the forum And soon after that I was lined up and ready to race with 370,373km on the odo The usual dusty approach road and bogans in taxis I'll just chuck up a bunch of pics without much comment, they speak for themselves really from here and it's getting late: Needs moar mods Paused racing to land two RFDS planes, but were able to drive around them on return road while they loaded up

So I fronted up to scrutineering and got given a list of things to fix, fixed them and returned and passed Added another pass sticker to the laundry list (missing the 2013 sticker sadly) A couple of days later I hit 368,888km Drove to Albany end of Feb for a Rufus Du Sol concert (fun) and ended up realising I would tick over 370,000km on the way down to RW Removed the old banner and took a pic of the normal windscreen since I never see it like this any more ...and got to work on the annoying job of fitting the new one single handedly. Rush job thanks to mozzie attack means it's got loads of bubbles in it this time! I had grabbed some BA XR8 18" rims as spares months ago and got some daily driver spec tyres fitted to them to drive down on ...because I was also buying 80 treadwear tyres this year for proper race level grip (Nankang AR-1 in 255/40/17) instead of driving down on a grippy all rounder road tyre (Pilot Sport 3) or harder tread semi slick (Nankang NS-2R 180 treadwear) like prior years. Lugged them home along with previously fitted 17" sh*tty tyres which I need to sell...