blog post

NOT ANOTHER ONE!

August 5, 2019

Alexandra Whitley

photo credit: Daniel Kalisz

It was back to home soil for the fourth round of the Australian TCR series, a track which I have visited many times as a teenager watching, but never raced on.

Only 2 hours from my home town, its called Queensland Raceway in Ipswich known as “The Paper Clip” a simple track on paper, but technical once you’re out there. I have had much success at the go-kart track up the road and had a great feeling about the weekend. It was the first weekend in August, the mornings were fresh and days were beautiful! And it’s the third round in a row we have cracked a radiator!

I headed over the ditch early to visit some local Toowoomba business’s trying to find more sponsorship for the up coming round, I then spent the day at Paul Morris’s Driving Centre at Norwell honing my skills with “Robbo The Whisperer.” (The Best Driver Trainer in Australia) to prepare myself for the weekend.

It was great to get back in the Actron Air Volkswagen again on Friday for practice, we built on speed all day as I got in tune with another new track.

We made a few changes to the car overnight to help it rotate better in the mid corner. We improved massively in times during qualifying from the day before and started 17th for race one. I slowly made my way forward, it was a clean race. We crossed the line in 10th place and with a penalty further up the grid and a driver experiencing food poisoning and too sick to race we moved up one place to 9th. It was great to get back inside the top 10 and an even better position to start for Sundays race.

Sunday was the hottest day yet and our races were also in the middle of the day, I made sure I ate well and was well hydrated for the day ahead. After a long morning we finally rolled out for race 2. It was great to have supporters and fans on the grid with me for the grid walk. After a quick formation lap we were off. I got a terrible start and was swamped by cars from each side, our race pace was competitive, but unfortunately with one lap to go we lost power, the engine overheated and I pulled over and we were classed as a non finisher.

We were towed back to the pits and with quick hands the Matt Stone Racing Team found a cracked radiator, they replaced it in the nick of time.

All the fans cheered as I was pushed back to start the race. I didn’t make the grid and started from pit lane. My tyres were cold and the first few laps were loose! We brought it home in 14th as a few other drivers had mechanical issues of their own.

I’m currently sitting 13th in the championship from 22 drivers, we will keep working hard to find the sponsorship to run at Winton at the end of the month and move inside the top 10.

thanks for reading - Alexandra

Contact Me And Let's Start Talking

Recent Posts