Another world championship was contested at Bayside today. The level of competition in Stock Touring Cars is so high it’s unbelievable. Also some of the other classes are attracting very competitive fields.
Great weather, an almost perfect Brisbane Winter day for some great racing. The track was officially classified as slow and certainly there was a bit of dust on the surface, courtesy of a light westerly wind blowing for a couple of days.
I decided to run an untested and untried Academy STR4 to see how this economical new Touring Car would stack up straight from the box with no mods and no option parts. The car actually wasn’t bad at all, the driver, on this day was fairly ordinary – for the first two heats I couldn’t do better than a consistancy of .71 and .67. Not really good enough to get to the sharp end of this field. I ended up qualified 6th and ran the EC in the final and finished in 5th. Not to bad when you consider that the cars in front of me were 3 x cyclone, 1 x Xray and 1x EVO5. I felt pretty good about the STR4.  
The car has a front oneway and I don’t like driving with oneway so guess that’s at least part of the reason I couldn’t get the consistancy down. I will build a front spool and a front diff for the car as soon as I can get the bits and see how much difference they make. It’s good around Hobby Station with the oneway though so I’ll leave that in for Wednesday nights at the moment.
I think a pretty good day was had by most, Mark Richards, as usual ran a good meet. Mark is looking for volunteers to learn the computer so if you feel that you’d like to have a go at controlling a race meet give him a yell.