It’s no secret that Victor Bray has not enjoyed the same form in recent seasons as he did through his terrifying reign in the nineties.
But the former Top Doorslammer champion showed he still had the mettle needed at Perth Motorplex, qualifying in sixth spot and reaching the semi finals in his Sidchrome Chev after an upset win over points leader Peter Kapiris in the first round.
“Besides the bonus points on offer it’s been really a positive weekend for me,” the Queensland tomato farmer said. “We knew coming into this event we would be up against it, so we decided to use a combination of gear ratios and clutch setting that we have wanted to test for some time now.
“Although it did not deliver me a 5.80, it did give me a very consistent car with a good baseline to work on. It was a shame I had to make the engine change before the semi but as it turned out Zap had to do the same.
“When I was about half track I could not see Zap beside me, so I thought I was in for a good show but he was just too good in the second half .“
The team had to do plenty of work in the pits between rounds, swapping an engine from Ben Bray’s Sidchrome Monaro into the Chev after a torched cylinder head (see the time lapse video of the engine change below).
It turned out to be John Zappia who was the nemesis of Ben Bray too in the first round, with Ben going up in smoke before the Christmas tree.
“We did have to really hop it up to take on Zap but we were a little too aggressive for what we thought the track would handle and it just shook the tyres early in the pass,” he said.
“The up side of this weekend is, we didn’t hurt my championship position. The bad thing is Dad has moved up a few spots from tenth to sixth so that puts him one spot ahead of me and that affects my workshop bragging rights.
“All jokes aside we had a better weekend than we thought we would but it was my birthday on Friday and a gold ANDRA Christmas tree would have been a nice present, maybe next year.”
The father and son duo will be making a stop in Sydney on their way home for a photo shoot that will appear in an upcoming edition of Zoo Weekly.
