Best Racing to compete in Production Touring Car Championship.

[bestracing]

Best Racing would like to announce that this year we will be competing in the Australian Production Touring Car Championship . Darren will be competing in the ST170 in Class C against makes such as Toyota, Proton's, Hyundai's and Citroen. The PTCC has a large field of competitors for season 2007, check out there website at : http://www.ptcc.net.au

The Production Touring Car Championship (PTCC) is conducted over eight meetings.
Rd 1 24-25th February Wakefield Park
Rd 2 28-29th April Winton Raceway
Rd 3 16-17th June Queensland Raceway
Rd 4 14-15th July Adelaide International Raceway
Rd 5 25-26th August Winton Raceway
Rd 6 29-30th September Calder Park
Rd 7 27-28th October Wakefield Park
Rd 8 24-25 November Oran Park

The ST170 after last season has had body repairs and repainted, going to the signwriter tomorrow for fitting of new stripes, numbers and panels. Darren, Pete and Frank will be heading off to Goulburn early Friday ready to compete in the first round at Wakefield this weekend. After this race meeting the team plan to do some testing and development work in preparation for next round at our home track.

Unfortunately I will not be attending this weekend as it is our daughters first go kart meeting for the season. Ellexandra (age 7) is competing in the midgets at Albury / Wodonga so I will need to support her.

If anyone is at any of the PTCC meetings make sure you come and say hello, we always love to see Euroford members.

Regards Treena

[nitroman]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is an ST170?

[photn]

lol....Its a Ford LR focus (orignal model) which has 170BHP which equats to 127kw....the focus only normally had 94kw. so it was a big step up....

Its essentially the Sports model for the original Focus. just like the XR5T is for the focus now.

[photn]

Originally Posted by bestracing

Best Racing would like to announce that this year we will be competing in the Australian Production Touring Car Championship . Darren will be competing in the ST170 in Class C against makes such as Toyota, Proton's, Hyundai's and Citroen. The PTCC has a large field of competitors for season 2007, check out there website at : http://www.ptcc.net.au

The Production Touring Car Championship (PTCC) is conducted over eight meetings.
Rd 1 24-25th February Wakefield Park
Rd 2 28-29th April Winton Raceway
Rd 3 16-17th June Queensland Raceway
Rd 4 14-15th July Adelaide International Raceway
Rd 5 25-26th August Winton Raceway
Rd 6 29-30th September Calder Park
Rd 7 27-28th October Wakefield Park
Rd 8 24-25 November Oran Park

The ST170 after last season has had body repairs and repainted, going to the signwriter tomorrow for fitting of new stripes, numbers and panels. Darren, Pete and Frank will be heading off to Goulburn early Friday ready to compete in the first round at Wakefield this weekend. After this race meeting the team plan to do some testing and development work in preparation for next round at our home track.

Unfortunately I will not be attending this weekend as it is our daughters first go kart meeting for the season. Ellexandra (age 7) is competing in the midgets at Albury / Wodonga so I will need to support her.

If anyone is at any of the PTCC meetings make sure you come and say hello, we always love to see Euroford members.

Regards Treena

ohh im gonna make a really big effort to come to as many as i can. this will be great...would you know of any track days lol that we may join into lol hahahah

i hope the ST170 gives it to them again this year

[FOCUSonTHIS]

Originally Posted by photn

the focus only normally had 94kw.

mine has 96kW. you were 2kW off....not good enough.


I will hopefully make it to all 3 of the rounds in victoria. good luck guys

[Piotr]

Good luck to the team at Best Racing. I will try make it down to the oran park round

[Ives]

All the best to everyone at Best Racing for this 2007 Season.

[tickford2001]

Hi treena,

Just wondering why you guys have stepped away from the pcaa? Thought you would have taken the opportunity to run in the Bathurst 12 Hour...although if your budget is anything like mine I can understand the strain it would cause!

All the best with your 2007 ptcc campaign though, hopefully our category will joining in with some of the AMRS rounds, so ill be sure to come and say gday

cheers,
dave

[Fast Eddie]

I'm heading down to Wakefield Park most likely Saturday morning so I'll try and catch up with the Team Saturday afternoon and will definitely be there for the racing on Sunday representing the Eurofordclub.

Darren's first run with the PTCC was successful and certainly "turned some heads" so here's hoping for a successful 2007.

[Timmeh]

I'll definitely try to make the Sydney round, good luck in the new series guys.

Sorry you won't be at the Bathurst 12Hr, but gotta chase the fun, I understand!

Timmeh

[bestracing]

Originally Posted by tickford2001

Hi treena,

Just wondering why you guys have stepped away from the pcaa? Thought you would have taken the opportunity to run in the Bathurst 12 Hour...although if your budget is anything like mine I can understand the strain it would cause!

All the best with your 2007 ptcc campaign though, hopefully our category will joining in with some of the AMRS rounds, so ill be sure to come and say gday

cheers,
dave

Hi Dave,

Why did we leave PCAA? It was a very difficult decision, we loved running in PCAA, but the series has become very expensive, their is a lack of competitors and I really dont know if the series will survive ( I hope it does!) and we had just lost our enthusiasm for the series. Plus parity was not distributed evenly, we were carrying lead (weight) and rev limit restrictions.

Why PTCC? More variety of makes, different competitors to race / challange, new series championship to win!

Bathurst? We would of loved to run Bathurst 12 hour, Darren loves racing at Bathurst. However getting parts for the focus was an issue, lack of preparation time for Bathurst and then the tightness of the next rounds which would of made it very difficult to make any repairs ready for the remainder of the season. Yes expense is another factor, it would of cost us at the minimum (entry, parts, travel, accom, etc) $ 30,000 +

A major contributing factor was Ford. We approached Ford Australia they were not even interested in the fact that we had won the championship let alone that a we drove a focus, left several messages, but they never returned our call....... or responded to our written proposals. We had been talking to Motorsport Manager Ray Price.

Treena

[melbzetec]

Originally Posted by FOCUSonTHIS

mine has 96kW. you were 2kW off....not good enough.

mmmmmmmmmmmm. Your car only sounds like 94kW Adam. ROFL :evil_laug

[bestracing]

Spoke to Darren this evening, took the Focus for a run today. Was happy with the set up and made no changes, all ready for tomorrow's sessions.

Saturday 's schedule is:
Practise 10.10am & Qualifying Session at 1.50pm

Sunday's schedule is:
Race 1 - 9.15am
Race 2 - 11.05am
Race 3 - 2.20pm

Treena

[Timmeh]

Shame that Ford don't seem to care.

Can't wait to hear how it all goes, keep us posted!

Timmeh

[Fast Eddie]

Well, the weekend resultwere mixed. Race 1, 1st in Class but on the start line for Race 2 a driveshaft broke and unfortunately resulted in a DNF. After a lot of work (gross misunderstatement)
from Darren, Frank and Pete to try and ready the ST170 for Race 3 time was against them. After the DNF in Race 2 the car was returned to the garage and it was discovered that the power steering was damaged due to the driveshaft failure and a persistent leak could not be fixed and it resulted in a DNS for Race 3.

Myself and the Team were disappointed but there's always the next Round.
BTW Treena was sorely missed as she was taking care of her Daughter's endeavours with her karting.

[Timmeh]

Unlucky for the team, but great first race result. Haven't they had driveshaft problems before? Where are they breaking, out of curiousity?

All the best to the team for Round Two!

Timmeh

[tickford2001]

Originally Posted by Fast Eddie

Well, the weekend resultwere mixed. Race 1, 1st in Class but on the start line for Race 2 a driveshaft broke and unfortunately resulted in a DNF. After a lot of work (gross misunderstatement)
from Darren, Frank and Pete to try and ready the ST170 for Race 3 time was against them. After the DNF in Race 2 the car was returned to the garage and it was discovered that the power steering was damaged due to the driveshaft failure and a persistent leak could not be fixed and it resulted in a DNS for Race 3.

Myself and the Team were disappointed but there's always the next Round.
BTW Treena was sorely missed as she was taking care of her Daughter's endeavours with her karting.

thats some tough luck guys, can understand your disappointment - im sure you guys will bounce back though for round 2.

are you allowed to do something about improving the driveshafts or is that a no-no because of the "production car" format?

[bestracing]

Yes the weekend was tough! The team were dissappointed in the weekends results, however we still got points for the round and can only hope things will be better next round. Looking forward to Round 2 as it is at Winton Raceway (home track!) we have not raced at Winton for many years, so are excited about racing at home and no travel.

The Production car rules restrict what we can do to the driveshafts, replacements parts need to be the same as original. Our problem was the driveshaft snapped in 1/2. The team mangaged to repair the driveshaft only to discover that the power steering fluid was 1/2 of what it should of been, on further investigation found we had a broken seal and fractured brake pipe.

Our daughter "Ellexandra" had a good 1st meeting go karting in the midgets class, she came 5th overall for the weekend. Ellexandra is the only girl competing in the midgets class and was very proud of herself when she beat some of the boys!

Treena

[Timmeh]

Excellent news about Ellexandra!

Is there a website we can visit to check the overall standings of the new series, and maybe get photos?

Timmeh!

[tickford2001]

where is your daughter racing karts treena?

tim the website is: www.amrs.net.au but i dont think it has been updated yet

[Fast Eddie]

This site will get you right to the Category that Best Racing is entered in.

ptcc.net.au

Hope this helps.
Fast Eddie.

[Timmeh]

Cheers guys.

[bestracing]

Our daughter Ellexandra is a member of the Albury / Wodonga go kart club, she has only been racing since June 2006 (5 meetings in total), this year we plan to compete in club meetings and towards the end of the season look at going to other tracks once she gets her confidence up. Our son Zakkary (who is just 5) also gets out in the kart but cannot offically race til age 7, he is amazing in what he already has accomplished and turns alot of heads, he is as quick as his sister already, so I think we will be racing for awhile.

Update on the focus:
The car has been pulled apart, engine is out! We have decided whilst everything is in bits, to take the opportunity to replace the clutch, check the engine, replace driveshafts and powersteering and anything else that we find.

Photos of the focus & points update:
Check the www.ptcc.net.au website.
They also have regular news from teams, driver profiles, there is also a forum.

Treena

[Piotr]

Just a quick question. On the specs page on the PTCC side it states the ST170 as having 278mm front and 260mm rear brakes but didn't the ST170 come with 300m front and 280mm rears?

[bestracing]

Well about the only thing that is right on car specs on the PTCC site is the suspension, everything else is not accurate. Yes the ST170 does come with 300 front and 280 rears.

[photn]

how is the Best racing team going. any more news on there ventures?

[Fast Eddie]

Their next races are a Winton, Victoria 28/29th of April.

[bestracing]

Hi Everyone,

Just thought Id drop you a line and let you know that the car is all back together, has a new clutch, driveshafts replaced new brakes and power steering fixed. Darren and Frank are taking the car for a test drive this afternoon. The only thing left to do is the car needs a tune.

We have entered the next round of PTCC which is at Winton Raceway, 28 and 29th April, which unfortunately clashes again with Ellexandra's go karting meeting, at least this event I'll be there Saturday.

Ellexandra is very excited about her next meeting as her new Ax9 arrow cart arrives next week, so she is hoping to stir up the boys again. Next weekend she is attending a development clinic which assists the kids with cart set up and driving techniques. Zakkary (age 5 and cannot race til he is 7) is very pleased as he will be getting Ellexandra's old go kart and getting some lap practice.

Cheers Treena