In his latest blog, XFORCE Brand Ambassador and Erebus Academy driver Adam Marjoram reflects on his return home to Perth last weekend for the latest round of the V8 Ute series.
These weekends really pass quickly don’t they?
It’s always a pleasure to race in Perth, the home race is always a special one for drivers due to the added support and great atmosphere it brings. I was extremely busy in the week leading up to Barbagallo with University assignments due, a Princess Margaret Hospital visit, the Erebus Academy track walk for young karters, announcing new sponsorships and not to mention all the physical, mental and track preparation for the weekend.
We started the weekend very positively in practice. Qualifying was an area of interest as for the first time this year we ran the F1 style of qualifying where we had 3 knockout sessions. In Q1 we finished fourth, but in hindsight probably took the best out of the tyres too early, leaving us with 12th in Q2 and as a result missing Q3. This is an area that with experience I will gain better control.
Race 1 saw me start 12th but finish 14th. Our aim for this race was to come out the other side with a bag of points, a straight car and conserved tyres. Conserving the tyres around Barbagallo is probably one of the most important objectives as the rate of tyre degradation is extremely high and we are only given six tyres for the weekend.
Race starts was something I worked on over the weekend with my engineer Simon – just trying to build a routine into the 10 seconds before launching the car and keeping that build up consistent.
Race 2 was a reverse top 19, meaning I started from sixth. I didn’t have a great start but I waited for my car to come on and to make the positions back up. I sat in third for a while before a charging Kris Walton passed me and started hunting down the second placed Wayne Wakefield. From my view in fourth I could see those two having an epic battle. I ended up drag racing Wakefield on the finish straight with the chequered flag waving, narrowly missing third spot by a quarter of a car length. This fourth place was my personal best result in the V8 Ute category and I was very happy with the way I kept the car within its limits of grip as to not cook the tyres too early.
In Race 3 I started 10th, got a great launch, but unfortunately everyone else did as well. Early into the race I had a fairly large lockup and flat spotted a tyre pretty severely, which meant I dropped back through the pack all the way to 19th as I lacked speed.
Over the whole weekend the team and I kicked many goals and there were many promising aspects to our weekend. I can’t compliment the team enough for providing such a well prepared car and such a great platform from which I can continue to learn in what is only my third year in a car. Barry, Simon, Cliff, Dave, Drew and Damien have been instrumental in this preparation and my steep learning curve – thank you.
Of course, this would not be possible without all of the fantastic support I receive from my fans and sponsors. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the continued support from Auto One, SP Tools, Supercharge Batteries, Valvoline, Nova 937 and my new sponsors in XForce Performance Exhaust and Everblast W.A.
See you at Hidden Valley!
Cheers,
Adam.
