The 2013 ACT Indoor Titles field included a number of established fast drivers as well as quite a few up and coming drivers. I spent theFriday fine tuning my car to the track conditions and specific needs of the Modified class and by the start of qualifying I felt I had a competitive car.
Unfortunately my Transponder failed to register in Q1 so I recorded my poorest result of the weekend, this was still an informative run however as I was able to gauge my car against the quickest cars in the field, back in the pits I exchanged my front gear diff for a Spool. Q2 saw me scoring laps and taking the 2nd quickest run for the round. Problems again in Round 3 with my car coming to a standstill after 6 laps. Q4 saw the pace pick up even more with me shaving 3 seconds off my time from Q2, unfortunately Michael Stone went even faster securing TQ in the process. In Q5 I slipped to 3rd with a Win for Stephen Cheung, the top three cars in Q5 were covered by less than 1.5 seconds, it was tight.
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The next day we had one last round of qualifying, I needed to beat Steve to preserve my 2nd place on for the Finals grid. I made one last setup change, switching to a Mazda Speed 6 body. The car felt awesome, so good in fact I locked in the fastest qualifying time overall. Michael Stone took TQ; Mark Wallin secured 2nd and Stephen Cheung 3rd.
The Finals were fast and furious with some great driving on display from the three front runners. I went as hard as I could for the first few corners unfortunately I clipped Michaelâ™s car and while I redressed my mistake Stephen Cheung took the lead. Michael applied pressure to Stephen while I hung back to see what would happen. On lap 4 my patients was awarded with Michael and Steve coming together, it was all I needed to take the lead and drive the wheels of the car taking leg 1 by a lap.
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With the nerves from Leg one out of the way, Leg two was a much calmer race, Michael led away with me chasing. We steadily built a gap on the rest of the field while I worked to find a way past Michael, on Lap 17 I pulled off the move and took the lead, but it was not to last, on lap 21 I touched a track barrier, this was all Michael needed to take back the lead. We passed the timing loop for the last time, with the computer counting the final seconds of the race we had less than a lap to go! Michael held me off for most of the lap save for the last corner, Michael touched the barrier pushing his car wide allowing me to sneak up the inside and take the win by 4 tenths of a second.
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Leg three was an anticlimax. A bad start saw me slip to 6th place eventually working my way back to 3rd place only to suffer a problem and drop back to 6th.
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A Finals positions 2013 ACT Indoor Titles
1. Mark Wallin - XRAY T4
2. Michael Stone
3. Stephen Cheung
4. Jeffrey MacKie 5. Brian Malaquin - XRAY T4
6. Stephen Awizen 7. Todd Grech - XRAY T4
