The weather was playing games on a very good grid of six F5000 cars, a mid-1980's F1 Beatrice Lola and some quick 2 litre F2 cars plus all the BDA/FVA Formula Pacific/Atlantic cars plus a couple of Indy cars but it fortunately was dry for qualifying and drizzled in race 1.
QUALIFYING: Tom almost broke his own qualifying best time with an astounding 1m25.9 followed over 4 x seconds in arrears by very experienced Victorian Andrew Robson in his recently rebuilt Lola T332 F5000, Chris Farrell in a quick little F2 March and the rest who in some cases were out of their usual order due to heavy traffic.
RACE 1. Drizzle and all times dropped .. some more than others but Tom won easily by over 20 seconds from Andrew Robson, Farrell and the rest some of whom were struggling a bit on the slippery circuit.
RACE 2. The rebuilt magneto from the previous June meeting again decided to toss in the towel … these old items are very good when working but temperamental so he missed R2 entirely as the car would not start in the pit garage.
RACE 3. Starting from the back of the grid with a new updated spare magneto fitted Tom had passed about 2/3rds of the field by lap 3 when a brake disc mounting hub disintegrated causing other damage so Tom's weekend was over and he DNS race 4 which was left to Robson to win.
FOOTNOTE. It must be said however that after some alignment development work in the workshop prior to the meeting plus a lot of changes and adjustments being made to the car all through Friday practice the day before the meeting, the team was ecstatic with the extra speed and handling so Phillip Island 17-20 March 2016 with a suspected grid of 30 x F5000 cars including a lot of overseas cars cannot happen soon enough … albeit with the new magneto and rear wheel hub replaced so watch this space.
Cheers
TEAM TOM
For more information about Tom head to www.tomtweedie.com or search for 'Team Tom - Tom Tweedie Motorsport' on Facebook.
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