Finding myself in Brisbane on Friday afternoon, we decided to make the trek out to Brendale for some Friday night 19T/Gas Tourer action.  The Friday night meetings seem to be going well with a good round-up of RTR Gas and Electric cars along with the 19T and Gas Tourer classes gathering.
Heavy ran the R12 in Gas Tourer, but was beset by engine related problems. When the carbie wasn’t falling out (!), the car was working well.  The fact that we were too busy talking and missed one of the heats also didn’t help.  We both left before the finals, but judging by the earlier pace, Jason Dorn would have been hard to beat.
In 19T the usual pace-setting trio of Anthony Atack, Peter Dooley and Leonard Lai led a small but high quality field.  I wrestled early in the night with getting the car to work well, before eventually reverting to a setup close to my Nationals settings – and putting on some decent tyres. In the last heat my car was good, and a couple more small changes had me feeling confident for the finals.  Anthony had set TQ from Leonard, Peter and myself.
My final wasn’t what i hoped for, but very enjoyable nontheless. In the first lap I got into a side by side duel with Peter for a few corners before I ran out of road and clipped a kerb dropping to the tail of the field. I then came upon Tim Weier – one of the up-and-coming Brendale drivers. Tim did a great job and for 2 minutes made not a single mistake despite my being literally parked on his bumper. By the time I finally found a way past Leonard was quite a few seconds up the road. My car was very good and I was able to drive it very hard and close the gap down to about a second with a lap to go. Then the unthinkable – the 4300 thermalled!  Anthony won by a fair margin from Peter, with Leonard third, then myself, Karl and Tim. 
The night was enjoyable, the racing challenging, and the 19T class will be very interesting at the Bayside Cup. I do miss the horsepower of Mod though!
My next race should be the Bayside cup (not sure whether 19T or Mod or both yet) and then the Gold Coast Challenge.  With guys like Jake Zarb and Simon Feigl coming up to do battle at the Gold Coast – that’s an event not to be missed.
One final note – during the night I also developed a new cost-saving concept I’ll call “Control tools”. Leonard in particular was a big fan of the idea.  I’ll talk some more about it during the week maybe…. 😉