With Sydney Dragway’s East Coast Thunder now complete, Team Bray Racing is facing down a busy run to Summer with plenty of events on the docket between now and Christmas.
This weekend’s event provided a steamy start to the silly season, with 40-degree heat and then heavy rain welcoming the East Coast Thunder racers at Sydney Dragway for Friday qualifying.
With the similar weather forecast for race day, both Victor and Ben dialed in soft tune-ups to their Gulf Western Oil-supported machines for the first qualifier to gather data before winding them up for Q2 (5.992s for Victor and 5.828s for Ben).
When Q3 was cancelled thanks to the opening heavens, TBR’s Q2 efforts thankfully were enough to secure their places in the 16-car Pro Slammer eliminations field.
Unfortunately, come Sunday, Victor and Ben would have plenty of time to watch the racing with both Gulf Western Oil drivers over-powering the track in their first round for losses to Sam Fenech and Mark Hinchelwood respectively.
They didn’t let that ‘free time’ go to waste, however with Ben climbing board the Gulf Western Oil Burnout Car to the delight of the crowd with competition winner Jason Barry of Border Crane Consultants joining Ben for his tour of the burnout pad.
“No one wants to go out in the first round but when it happens, you have to make the most of it and that is what we did – the fans loved the fact I could bring the Gulf Western Oil Burnout Car to the burnout pad and put on a show for them,” Ben said
“That is what TBR is all about – putting on a show for the fans, for the sponsors, and for everyone involved. We hope that they enjoyed it, we sure enjoyed being there.”
New Zealand’s Trevor Smith, who has brought his Pro Slammer operation to Team Bray Racing, went through to the semi-final after dispatching champion racer John Zappia in round one before enjoying a bye run in the quarter-final.
“Trevor did a great job and we are really enjoying having him pit with us after he moved his operation over to our workshop,” Victor said.
“Our congratulations also go to Kevin Lyle who took out the Pro Slammer East Coast Thunder victory – this was Kevin’s first ever event win and sees him take over the championship lead.”
With the East Coast Thunder now behind them, TBR is preparing to take its road show to Toowoomba, Gympie and Clontarf all before Christmas while also preparing for the next round of the 400 Thunder Championship at Willowbank Raceway on the 5th of January.
“There is certainly no rest in sight for Team Bray Racing – we have plenty of places to go and people to see over the run to Christmas and then we also have an event first thing in the New Year to get ready for,” Victor explained.
“It is going to be a great end to the year, and a great start to 2019, we can’t wait!”
Remember to tag your Team Bray Racing captures with #teambrayracing and #gulfwesternoil for a chance to be featured on the TBR Instagram account (Instagram.com/teambrayracing).
To keep up to date with all of the latest news from TBR, visit www.teambrayracing.com, follow the team on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teambrayracing, or interact with them on instagram (#teambrayracing).
