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Well what a busy couple of weeks that have been had by the Dale Williams Racing Team. January saw the team transport the Rayglass Falcon from its Auckland base down to Invercargill for Round Three and then on to Timaru for Round Four of the BNT V8 Championship.
Over the Christmas break the lads had done a fair bit of work to the suspension setup of the Falcon to try and provide better handling and more consistent results. These changes made for a busy couple of practice sessions at Round Three.
Invercargill
Invercargill provided some excellent weather that saw the spectators and crew alike scrambling to find sun screen so they didn’t all turn into lobsters. In Qualifying, the team were still coming to grips with the new handling package but they still managed to qualify just four tenths of a second off the top ten back in 16th position.
Race One saw Dale starting from Grid 14th after the officials shuffled around a number of cars due to penalties issued to certain drivers. Dale drove a consistent race to finish in 14th position.
Race Two was a close fought battle where all drivers remained in the same position from the end of the first turn to race completion with the exception of Dale who completed the only overtaking manoeuvre of the whole race to finish in thirteenth position.
The final race of the weekend was a reverse grid start. Dale was off to a good start but due to the nature of the Teretonga circuit Dale found it hard to get past some of the slower cars in front of him. Unfortunately the big guns managed to catch up and pass Dale. Final result for race three put Dale in 11th position.
Overall for the weekend Dale ended up 15th. Looking solely at the results, it doesn’t look like a fantastic weekend but the team gathered some valuable knowledge on the new handling package, finished all 3 races without a hiccup and didn’t have any damage to fix in the following week before Round Four at the Timaru Circuit.
Timaru
Heading into qualifying, the team were hoping for the wet weather to break through but unfortunately the rain clouds didn’t play ball and instead it was still fine, resulting in Dale qualifying down the field in 18th position.
The rain had just started to fall after the BNT V8’s left the dummy grid for the first race. All teams were looking up and wondering what tyres to send their drivers out on. 90% of the teams left their drivers on the dry weather slick tyres, which saw a big pile up in the final corner of the first lap bringing out the red flag and stopping the race for 15 minutes. All drivers were then in the pits for a tyre change. Dale started from 11th position when the race restarted, and he drove a magnificent race to finish in 4th position.
Race Two brought out dry conditions. Dale start in 4th, made his way up the second position but over the course of the race he fell back to his original starting spot, 4th place.
As Dale had two good results he had to start from grid 18th for the reverse grid final race, Dale was fine with this as the rain was starting to fall again, and he felt that he would be able to move through the field during the 22 laps. The race started well with Dale in 10th position midway through the first lap until an incident in front of him saw Dale take to the grass to avoid it all and ended up back in 19th position. Dale fought back well to finish the race in 11th spot.
When the final points were tallied up for the weekend Dale was in fourth position; well done to Dale and the team for an excellent result! The best yet.
Overall the team were happy with the South Island trip that showed that they have the potential for good results and they are looking forward to the next round at Manfield on February 13th – 14th. Dale is now sitting 14th in the NZ V8 championship.
For those of you that are in Feilding on 13th or 14th February come along to Manfield Raceway and see the Rayglass team in action, otherwise you can see the action on TV3 Sunday 14th from 2-6pm.
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