What is it about learning lessons? They are sometimes painful, but always valuable.  On the weekend I learned a couple more. You’d think after racing for 20 years there couldn’t be too many more things to learn – but one of the things I love about this game is that there are always new situations, and racing evolves quickly – presenting new challenges week after week.

I went down to Tamworth very keen to be competitive and focussed on making that happen.  Like most of the Queensland guys my preference was to run rubber tyres – I much prefer the feel of the car on rubber and find the preparation easier and less time consuming.  That said, we knew it was an open tyre race and that often foam is faster – so we took a couple of pairs as a backstop.
With a couple of runs on saturday night and another sunday morning I was pretty happy with the way the EC was working on Sorex 36 tyres. On new tyres in round 1 the car had a little push but was still very good to drive and quite quick. I was third behind Andrew Abbott and John Perkins – who were both significantly faster than me.
In the second qualifier I made a couple of changes to the car, improved it, drove about as good as I can and was still well off the pace of the front two.  The track seemed a little slower in this round.  I was still third and a few seconds clear of fourth.  
At that point I didn’t think I could improve the car much – it was really very good so I switched to foam tyres to try and bridge the nearly 1 lap gap to Abbot. My next run I took about 2 minutes to get used to foam and still went about 5 seconds faster.
Round four I changed the car to try and get rid of some “looseness” that had arrived with foam. Unfortunately I actually made the car worse!  I qualified 3rd behind Abbot and Perkins. Fourth was Chris Primmer, then Troy Loughlin and Anthony Atack (still on rubber tyres).
In the first final Andrew ran away from John who ran away from me. I had changed my car again and made it worse again. It was practically backing into every corner – though still with plenty of speed when I could string together some laps.  Andrew won pretty easily from John and myself.
In race two I changed lots of things – going up two spring rates on the front and one at the back, changing wheelbase, ride heights and droop. My car was now relatively driveable and I managed to chase down John and pass him after a very close and very enjoyable race. On the last lap I was about 5 secs behind Abbot when he rolled and had to be marshalled. He got back on track in front of me but with very dirty tyres so I managed to scramble past him on last corner and win the race.
In race three I improved the car slightly again. I got by John on the start and chased Abbot. I stayed closer this time and he rolled again – same corner – and had to be marshalled. John got in trouble as as well and I had about 4 sec lead after just 1 minute or so. I made a bad mistake and elected to go into “cruise” mode thinking I had enough lead. Turns out not and by the time I realised Abbot had broken through the rest of the field he was going ballistic and I couldn’t hold him off. He got to me with about 1 1/2 minutes to run and I could only hold him back for a couple of laps. He had too much speed for me to handle. I stayed close to the finish but he beat me by about 1 sec. 
It was like the old story of the tortoise and the hare. Andrew had speed to burn but made a couple of mistakes along the way.  Unfortunately (for me) on this occasion the hare overtook the tortoise just shy of the finish line.
In the end I was fairly happy with the day.  I did, however, learn two very valuable lessons.
The first was that driving a car on foam is very different to the more “normal” tyres we tend to run in Brisbane. On rubber tyres, neatness, precision and smoothness pays dividends, and thrashing the car doesn’t bring huge rewards. For me at least at Tamworth, speed on foam came with agressive and attacking driving.  When I really pushed the car, it was very fast. When I went into cruise mode, my lap times dropped off much more significantly than when the same happens on rubber.
My second lesson is that when you get an opportunity, don’t give your opponent a second chance. When I popped up in the lead in race three I should have kept the hammer down, turning the fastest laps I could possibly crank out.  The choice to go into a neat cruise to the end of the race was costly.  Maybe it was safe, but it was certainly costly.  Who knows, Andrew probably would have caught me anyway – he was very, very fast – but maybe I might have held on.  It’s not a mistake I’ll make again that’s for sure!
All in all I learned a lot, enjoyed some excellent racing and had a great road trip with my bro, my dad and some good mates. My car was good on foam tyres, but I didn’t have time to make the setup work as nice and consistent as it has been on rubber in recent weeks.