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Melbourne was host state of Round One of the new season of ADGP, and after a horror season last year, Robert Whyte and his team were excited to release their completely rebuilt 370Z ? prepared this year by the team at Japanese Parts and Performance (JPP). The following is Robert?s take on the weekend, as well as a killer video by Jet Multimedia:
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?Unfortunately due to the new steering kit not arriving in time we had no testing under our belt before coming into the new season. With a full day of practice on Saturday we were relying on getting the car dialled in and getting my head around the monster steering lock the car could now achieve.
We went on track and the car felt really strange in the steering. As we were the first people in the world to trial this new angle kit, we knew this may happen. Everything else felt great but trying not to crash it into a wall seemed to be all I was doing out there, with each lap spent trying to get my head around the new kit!
Disappointed and confused I came back in and had a brainstorm with the crew from JPP. They adjusted the car back to standard as much as they could without completely refabricating the steering setup. And still, it was not easy to drive but I just had to do the best with what I had and try to get used to it. As the day went on I started to get the swing of things and began to put down a couple of fairly solid laps.
The next day we had qualifying first up, and we managed to put down what we thought was a really good lap but somehow only managed to qualify 15th! Not to worry, I thought; it?s the battles I was more interested in ? to try work our way back towards the top.
We had our first battle against Melbourne local, Ender, who we managed to defeat fairly easily. This made me feel a little more confident in the car and its ability. In Top 16 we had #2 Qualifier Brendon Greaves from Perth who was driving really well and we knew that we had to put down a solid set of laps to be the victor. After making some contact it was deemed his mistake and we defeated him putting us through to the Top 8.
In Top 8 I was starting to get even more confident with the car and was happy with its speed and power. We went against new Achilles team mate Beau Yates from Sydney. He was driving really consistently all weekend and I knew we would need to apply some serious pressure. To defeat him and move on to Top 4, meant that on my chase run we got right up on his door and he drove off the track giving me a 10/0 advantage for the next battle.
As I lead I had a really good safe run and only had one corner to go (and still to this day I cannot tell you how it happened) but I hit the wall and Beau followed me in, causing significant damage to my steering and rear cradle! The judges all came down from the tower and asked if I could continue.
Unfortunately my car was not repairable at the track and we were forced to retire from the event giving Beau a free ticket to the Top 4! We ended up finishing in 7th for the weekend and are confident fixing the gremlins in our new steering kit we will be more than ready to go for a win at Round 2 in Adelaide.
Thank you to all my team partners in helping us continue to compete at a national level, including our newest team partner ? Raceworks.?
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