Indy on the Gold Coast

Hi Guys,



Indy was a massive weekend for all involved, huge crowds, great weather (besides Saturday), and of course great racing!



For me, Indy was all about learning a new circuit, a circuit that takes no prisoners and is quite happy to devour your car and spit it out the other end! I found Indy a very challenging circuit, it is extremely narrow and very hard on brakes. By about lap 3 my brakes would get that hot that no matter how hard I pressed the brake pedal the car would not pull up any quicker, that takes some getting used to! Probably the most difficult thing was trying to stay out of trouble, I think I had a magnet on my car that attracted trouble! In the end, although our results didn't show much, we came out of the race meeting with a straight car and I gained alot of experience on the Indy circuit which will hold me in good stead when I go back in 09.



Ral and Jade asked what keeps me cool in the hot conditions in Queensland and Bahrain, I used my cool suit all weekend and I will definitely use it in Bahrain also. In the car the temperature is usually 20 degrees hotter than ambient, so at Indy the inside of the car was reaching around 45 degrees! The cool suit helps to keep my core temp down which cools my body really well. Basically I wear a vest that has piping running all over the front and back, we have an ice box in the car and water is pumped through the ice box and into the vest.

So now the race team only have a few days to get the car ready and packed so it can be flown over to Bahrain. The cars get loaded onto space frames to travel overseas and all of our equipment gets packed into a container, so basically we only take what we absolutely need. It's a tough schedule at the moment and the boys are under the pump big time!

In big news today, Mark Skaife has announced he will retire at the end of this season! To me thats a bit of a shame as I think he is a true legend of our sport, not to mention an icon and he is still very much a competitive driver. It will be interesting to see whether he stays in the sport as an endurance driver and what involvement he will have with HRT, or whether he decides to explore other avenues in life. I'm sure over the next few months we will learn more about what Mark will do.

So I leave for Bahrain on Sunday afternoon, which means I will have a fews days over there to get used to the time zone and also check out some sight seeing. I have heard that there is a massive water park that is worth seeing, that might be my first stop!

Once again this will be another new track for me to learn, however I don't think Bahrain will be quite as difficult as Indy, there is plenty of run off area so I should be able to find the limits without choking on concrete!

Wish me luck

Cheers
TD