Engine components failure catch out multiple champions

After spending the best part of a month ensuring both Team Bray engines were ship shape and ready for battle in 2009 both Victor and Ben suffered uncharacteristic component failure at Willowbank while attempting to qualify for the third round of the championship.

Drag racing can be a cruel sport and weeks of work can be undone in split seconds. It's a sport in which a minor part's failure during qualifying can count you out of the whole event. For Victor it was a roller lifter failure and Ben dropped the end off an inlet valve. With the tight points battle it certainly came at an unfortunate time for the team morale but Team Bray has faced set backs before and will fight their way back as best they can.

" The third round of the Australian Top Doorslammer Championship the New Year series Round 1 at Willowbank Raceway in Queensland is now run and done but with five more rounds to go there is still much that can happen in the chase for a championship". said Victor.

For the second time ever, both Victor and Ben Bray failed to qualify for a Group One event with engine damage that could not be resolved in time to get either the Castrol Edge '57 Chev or the Monaro CV8Z down the track quick enough.

Both Team Bray cars had returned to running the proven 511-cubic inch Brad Anderson Hemis for this meeting. Although suffering tyre shake in their early attempts they had made solid headway when the engine damage struck.

There was some quite confidence going into the New Year Series after a very detailed rebuild of both team cars' engines.

Much of Team Bray's focus has gone into getting the new engine program underway and although some promise is evident, there is clearly much to do to get this combination 100% sorted out. Compounding the engine problem was the fact that the Willowbank track was extremely well prepared with too much grip for the Team Bray cars' set up.

"We're still trying to get on top of this new engine combination," Victor shrugged. "There are a lot technicalities associated with the changes we have made and normally you wouldn't consider jumping the gun on something as technical as this without having it sorted out. On paper it should have been right, but as the saying goes never judge a book by it cover or in this case never judge parts by the sales brochure".

"We've been caught out again," said a disappointed Vic, "but we'll be working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again".

The next round of the season the Summer Nationals at WSID, is only 6 weeks away and Team Bray will be putting in some intensive R & D and testing to get to the bottom of the engine quandary.

"We know they're the way to go, but if you want to be a pioneer you have to be prepared to get lost in the woods sometimes," Victor laughed. "I have an idea of what I think is going wrong and we'll look into that. We know we can make our cars go fast but at the moment we can't do it at call. But we didn't get where we are by being slack so we'll be working hard and we'll get to the bottom of this combination."