Shelly Bay Sealed Sprint.

Wow!! What a day!
In my last post I spoke about my goal of breaking the record for the annual Shelly Bay sealed sprint. Joe McAndrew set it back in 1996 in his Pro_drive Subaru Impreza at a time when he was the NZ rally champion.

Today I broke his record on all three of my timed runs, culminating in a 1:11.92 final run. Exactly the time I said I'd like to achieve in my last blog post! I'm absolutely over the moon with the result.

Over the last two weeks I've made several changes to my car, mostly around the suspension. When I first went out this morning for my practice run the car was very skittish and was jumping around at speed (180kph) on bumps. I almost felt like taking the car back to the workshop and un-doing all the changes. Luckily I didn't. Deciding instead to try lowering the tyre pressures and softening the rear shocks.

The changes worked and the car has never felt so positive when cornering. Where previously the car would 'push' towards the outside of a corner at speed, it now corners like a train on rails.
Only the tyres are dictating my position on the road and they seem to slip equally from both front and rear, making the car very predictable and easier to drive. Better tyres are now on my wish list.
The car just got a new set of race tyres but they don't seem to work as well some of the other brands I've seen. Oh well they can't be too bad if I'm breaking records!

I took a passenger on my last two runs, Sarah was first out and I think she got a reminder of why she hasn't been in the 'silly seat' for over a year. She seemed to be most terrified as I approached the Light-House hairpin turn at 180kph and didn't appear to be in any hurry to stop. The huge Brembo brakes fitted to the Evo are capable of stopping the car in an insanely short distance. Next out was family friend Lara, who got the privilege of being along for the record setting run. She can now claim to have been driven over the road between Scorching and Shelly Bays faster than than any person on the planet.

I've posted some new video footage on You-tube. It can be accessed via the video-bar on the right side of this page.

Meanwhile I'm going to have another beer and celebrate!

..Ron