The 50th annual Burson Auto Parts Goldenstates is a title every drag racer wants to win and none more so than Western Australia’s Daniel and Lisa Gregorini, who will both be seeking victory in the second round of the Australian Top Doorslammer Championship.
Lisa comes into the Goldenstates at Perth Motorplex this weekend leading the points following her breakthrough win at The Bend Motorsports Park while Daniel is hot off a personal best time.
“Momentum is huge in drag racing,” Daniel said. “To have both cars in the top four in qualifying at The Bend and then one car in the A Final and the other in the B Final was massive. Once we got home we had a week off from crew nights and working on the cars so we could let everyone take it all in, then we came back refreshed and focused to prepare for the Goldenstates.”
One of the issues that required some thinking was an electrical gremlin somewhere in both cars that was causing problems with the auto-shift. The team has come up with a clever workaround.
“Basically we think there’s something causing an interference with the current auto-shift boxes,” Daniel said. “So this week we have FuelTech units being wired into the cars to control just the auto-shift. Thanks to Matt and Aidan Abel for assisting with this.”
With cool conditions bordering on cold predicted for both nights of the Goldenstates, horsepower will be easy to come by, but traction is likely to be on a knife-edge.
“The conditions are ideal to make horsepower to run fast times,” Lisa said. “There’s a good amount of entries so that will mean plenty of rubber on the race track. With both of these things coming together we’re hoping we can run back into the 5.6s and maybe even improve on our current 5.68 PB.”
Daniel said he will be taking a safe approach to the tunes, including managing a repaired section of track at the Motorplex.
“We have plans to play with the shock settings to try and absorb the problem area and fingers crossed the cars stay planted,” he said. “On my 5.601 run at Tailem Bend we had my car shift 400rpm early on the third gear change. Had the car shifted correctly the numbers say it would have been a 5.585, so it’s definitely possible we could run a 5.5 but we need perfect conditions.
“Both cars have no lean-outs on the engine, because the simple fact is we have no spare engine right now. We do plan to be using some more functions on the FuelTechs at future events which will allow us to use lean-outs with safety parameters that will turn the engine off if there’s a boost spike or pan pressure rises.”
Australian Top Doorslammer Championship qualifying begins from 6pm on Friday night, with racing from 5.30pm on Saturday. Fans who can’t make it to the track in person will be able to watch live around the nation on Motorplex.tv
Major sponsors :
Scratch & Match Autocolour, Consolidated Group, Oil & Energy Pty Ltd, Kerb Doctor, Westcoast Siteworks, S&S Industries, Dalisa Estate Winery
Supporting sponsors :
Applied Automotive Performance Engines, Signbiz WA, RACIN, JC Race Stuff, G-Force Race Cars, Resolution Racing Services Inc, Dirty Detailing, Final Drive Engineering, DMPE INC, Kinetic Engineering
