The race is done! Chris Hyde (540), Chris Shevelling (Stock) and Peter Jovanovic (Modified) are the 2007 Queensland EP On-road Championship winners.
Basic results thanks to ORRCA Qld:540 Stock A Stock B Modified A Modified B
Full Alycat files are available at Sunshine Coast website.
Here’s how I saw the race:
540: While I’m not a supporter of the new 540 age rules, it certainly was fantastic to see 12 junior drivers competing in a championship event. The last time we saw that many kids racing in a Queensland Championship race? Never. From that perspective, kudos to ORRCA Qld, and of course the Sunshine Coast Club from where most of the kids hail. On the race track there was never any real doubt about the winner. Chris Hyde has demonstrated his pace everywhere in 2007 and this weekend was unbeatable. He also smashed the lap times being set in the other 540 support class to demonstrate that regardless of the age restrictions, he is a worthy Queensland Champion. Behind Chris there was some entertain racing, with Corey Broadstock, Sam Muller and Cameron Seib battling through qualifying before eventually lining up in that order. Come finals time and while Chris disappeared at the front, Corey was strong in second place to set down his fastest times of the weekend to take second from Cameron Seib. In the support 540 class, Nick Orr was the fast man in qualifying before Shane Mostyn turned the tables on Nick in the finals and Steve Evans finished third.
Stock: This was a class that promised some very close and hard fought racing, but in the end Chris Shevelling was dominant – comfortably top qualifying and then winning the finals series on pure pace. It didn’t all go easily for the Shevinator – having to launch a big fight back in the first final after being taken out early in leg 1 and then compounding that with a couple of his own mistakes to find himself rear of field. The drive back to second in that first final was impressive – but his drives in the subsequent finals to win by 10 seconds in a spec motor class were even better. Behind Chris things were much less clear, with plenty of pace on display from Johhny Hyde, Karl Yeung, Darren Matthews and Tim Weier. With respect to the other A finalists, these 5 had a clear break on the field. Tim took a strong win in A1 on his way to finishing a deserved and popular second behind the Shev. Karl Yeung continued his fine 2007 form to complete the podium, while Darren showed plenty of the pace that has made him consistently one of the quickest stock drivers around over the past few years to chip in with a couple of top 3 finishes in grabbing fouth. Hyde, though very quick in qualifying, struggled with some errors in the finals, and then was DQ’d from one leg resulting in a 5th place finish overall. Of the other finalists, Jason Wakefield recovered well to sneak into the finals after struggling through qualifying while behind him four first-time Stock A finalists all performed well. Andrew Clough and Matthew Belton were C finalists in 2006 and demonstrated their continued improvement, Peter Giblin tried his hand at EP and showed he will be a force to be reckoned with, while John Hansen was delighted to make his first (?) State A final.
Modified: Qualifying in modified was an epic battle, with unbelievable pace, high tyre wear and a game of strategy that played out over the whole 6 rounds of qualifying. The top 10 was not settled until the very last qualifying race. The path to the A final was varied with different performances and strategies being evident. Andrew Shapland confirmed that he has made a huge leap into modified racing by taking TQ at his first Championship event in the class. Behind him, current Aus Champ Peter Jovanovic lead Anthony Atack and Steven Jovanovic. These three has managed to make it through to the finals using one less set of tyres than Shaps – and so took a small but significant advantage. Drew Crawley was impressive in 5th and made the best use of his rubber, while Simon Fiegl drove a fantastic last heat to leap from 9th to 6th. 7th qualifier was John Perkins – confirming his recent excellent form – although having to use all three sets of available tyres to make it that far would compromise his finals. Likewise Leonard Lai in 8th who showed enough to let everybody know he had heaps of pace on board, but some early difficulties in qualifying would cost him in terms of having fresh rubber for the finals. Scott Guyatt managed to sneak in 9th from a very releived Andrew Abbot who thought he had seen his qualifying chances go up in smoke in the last heat – only to scrape into the A by the skin of his teeth.
Come finals time, and the close racing of qualifying was nowhere to be found – at least not at the front of the field. Peter J took things to another level and won the first two finals straight to lock up the championship. He defeated brother Steven and Anthony Atack in leg one, and then Anthony and Shaps in leg two. In the final leg Steve J stole some of the limelight with a powerful drive to win and lock up second overall. Anthony completed the podium with Shaps 4th place a powerful statement of things to come. Simon Fiegl got quicker as the weekend went on and was strong in the finals to snare 5th from Abbot (fine drives from back of the grid), Crawley, Perkins, Lai and Guyatt.
Observations:
– 5-cell was definitely the way to go in modified. There were a few cars running 6 cell, with Mick Sherman looking quick at times – but equally the car looking just a little harder to handle with the extra power. The Victorian contingent arrived not having run 5 cell before, but as practice went by on Friday, each locked in the decision to run with 5 cells. Notably the Jovanovic’s were the last to try 5 cell, but one run was all it took to convince both that the lower cell-count was the quickest way around the track
– high tyre wear, and the limited number of sets available made for some fascinating qualifying strategies. In modified some qualified on just one set of rubber (Jovanovic*2, Atack, Abbot, Guyatt), some used two sets (Feigl, Crawley, Shaps) and some all three sets (Lai, Perkins). The result was some very different tyre capacity come finals, with some drivers having no fresh rubber remaining, while others had one or two sets. On a track with such a big advantage with new rubber, this factor proved crucial.
– the Sunshine Coast club did a great job of organising and running the event. Heaps of helpers, plenty of officials in all the right places made it all work well. The whole team deserve our thanks and congratulations. They are without question the best club in south-east Queensland and richly deserve the accolades for a well run meeting on one of the best tracks in the country
– there are still plenty of different competitive chassis going around. In modified there were Schumacher Mi3 (2), Hotbodies Cyclone (4), Team Associated TC5 (2), Corally RDX Phi (1) and X-Ray T2-007 (1) in the finals, while stock had a similar mix
– the round-by-round qualifying system added lots of interest and provided lots of different paths to the finals. I think it was successful. Some reshaping of the control tyre rules might be in order for 2008 – with consideration being given to keeping finals and qualifying tyres separate
– the most controversy of the whole weekend happend in the support 540 class. Go figure.
My Weekend: I was really struggling for pace during practice on Friday and expecting the worst. My car was fine, but I was really struggling to get my head together and string together more than one or two reasonable laps. On Saturday things just felt much better. I managed three top-6 qualifying times in the first three rounds and at that point made the decision to try and get through qualifying without using my second or third sets of tyres. I switched back and forward between the Novak 3.5 and Speed Passion 3.5 motors – with no discernible difference in performance between the two (though the Speed Passion motor sounds insane!). In terms of chassis setup I went back to a near standard setting, then made a few changes to promote chassis roll and limit tyre wear. All the changes I made were positive and the car was excellent.
As qualifying wore on I slowly slipped backward and with one round to go found myself sitting in 7th place. I (together with 8th placed Abbot and 9th Feigl) agonised over whether to play it safe and run fresh rubber in the final qualifying round in order to secure the A final spot. In the end I opted for the wise choice and bolted on my second set. I got away to an ok start, but then noticed Abbot was out of the race with an electrical failure. I did a little mental arithmetic and figured my final position was safe so parked the car after two laps to preserve those new tyres for the finals. Luckily my maths was right and though I dropped a couple of spots to 9th, I made it safely through. That left me with two new sets of tyres for the finals, an excellent car and a lot of confidence. How wrong I was!
All three finals were disastrous! In all three I made it up to 5th or 6th before striking problems. Round 1 I broke a drive pin; Round 2 I spun in front of traffic and the resultant huge impact put me out; and Round 3 I had a wheel come loose while comfortably 5th. A mixture of poor preparation, driving errors and bad luck. The result? I finished 10th and kept on telling myself all the way home “that’s motor racing”. Truth be told, I was disappointed in myself. The car speed was there for a mid-field A final finish, but silly mistakes cost me. Such is life….