The Pootrol's Debut

This weekend was certainly one where many lessons were learnt. The first lesson learnt for me was that always bring some type of camp/shelter with you. After driving all day and arriving at Hyden, I was looking forward to setting up camp and having a nice easy night. As it happened, it was very, very wet and the only gear I had with me was the pootrol, a tarp, swag and my race gear. After parking the pootrol and going for a short walk around to check out who had arrived and seeing all the lovely warm trucks, tents and caravans set up, I had established that it probably hadn’t been the best idea to drive the “race car” to the track. A few minutes later Dirk rocked up with his truck and discovered that the ground was quite slippery. After pulling out his truck, I found that the car was hardly waterproof and the tarp which I had intended to sleep under was needed to keep the car dry. Luckily, Dirk offered a nice dry place out of the rain on his truck for the night which I am very thankful for.

Went to scrutineering, signed in and the car was passed no faults found, a testament to the FJG Engineering (dad’s) preparation. The next day, mum & dad arrived with our truck, dad having only flown back into Perth late for the race. We went out on recon and found that all the rain which had fallen had made the track quite wet, a good sign for the 4wd pootrol. After recon I headed up to telecom tower along with the CAMS steward and Dieter to do my OLT, a good chance for me to see how the car felt at a quicker pace and get ready for prologue. Prologue time and with dad belted up in the silly seat coaching me through the track, I set what I felt was a pretty good time despite a few wild rides and a missed  gear or two. There was then a nice long gap before the daunting night section. The plan was for dad to drive this section, but the NCR rules meant that since I prologued that I had to drive it. I must admit, that I was just a little nervous before setting off. I set off at a reasonably steady pace until only a few km’s into the first lap I filled in our lights after hitting the creek a little hard. From here I just took it steady to make sure that we still had a car to race but still managed to smash a mirror and break an exhaust mount.

Day 2, Section 2 and our race plan was to catch Daniel who started immediately in front of us in the other Production 4WD. We rounded up Daniel and set about building a buffer and this was when the temperature gauge started to rise and we found ourselves in a spot of bother. We stopped 50m short of where Travis Robinson had stopped and he showed some of the helpfulness of the off road community, rushing up to the car, fire extinguisher in hand, having seen all the steam and smoke coming from the pootrol. It happened that the black OBR Jimco was in need of a belt to limp back to the pits, so we were happy to hand over a couple of our spares, which they some how put on the Jimco to get it back to the pits.  Our issues were that the heater hose had split and all that was needed was a couple of temporary plugs and some water to replace the coolant that we had lost (thanks Kim). After dad and I fixed the car, we set off at a decent pace, trying to make up some of the 25 minutes that we had lost. We ended the section 9 and a half minutes behind Daniel, setting the scene for a big chase in the last section.

Prior to starting the final section, we put a more permanent fix on the heater hose and also put on a new fuel filter after cracking the one that we already had on there. With Dad again at the wheel, we were running hard and caught and passed a few cars. Big Russ came by in the Sootchucker, after stopping on the first lap and I was ready to catch the Mrs Macs pie as he came past, but he was on a mission and had no time for pies. We were still running at a good pace and I could tell dad was in his element as he was driving one handed and was relaxed at the wheel. We were catching some oily smelling dust and it was then I knew that Dominator lay dead ahead. We pushed on, knowing that Dan would be doing all he could to keep his 9 and a half minute lead. After rounding up Dominator we continued on and finished with some good laps in a track that was getting more and more chopped up with each lap.  Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t quite peg back the margin to Dan, falling just over minute short to the mighty Toyota. All in all it was a great event, I had an absolute blast. Thanks to WDR for putting on the event and congratulations on 20 years.

So I guess the moral of the story is that Toyotas are better than Nissans and that whilst the heater was nice during the night section, it’s always the little things which come back and bite you

Me going a bit too hard on prologue	Making a splash in the wet	and?