Brett, the car and his trophies

The MRT team overcame an early brake fire and later in the day a mishap with another GTR skyline. "I drove the Evo harder than I ever have" Brett Middleton said, "and our effort in developing a 'complete package' shows that outright power or huge modifications is not the way to create a strong package. A balance of handling, power and overall set up is what's needed" Brett added.

MRT were outgunned in the power stakes with several Evo's and Subaru's in the category obviously having huge power from huge mods, but the demon driving of Brett with the balance of handling and drivability proved the winner on the day. "Some teams bolted road tyres to cars that were normally on R series tyres, these teams found out that you cant just swap tyres and have the car handle correctly", Brett said. "Some other teams went for big mods, with huge turbo's and found that they had poor brakes and horrible handling, as a result they suffered" he added.

Our partnership with quality suppliers such as Whiteline, TEIN, EcuTeK, SBS (brakes) and Disc Brakes Australia, etc means we build cars that meet (and exceeds) the needs of our clients. Just bolting on parts no longer works with modern cars, things need to be tested and most of all parts need to work as a "package".

Effectively running two events in one, there was an 'open' category and a 'Clubsprint' category, with the main difference being tyres. Clubsprint cars could only run 'road' tyres and 'R' series semi slick tyres were only allowed for the open cars.

A late minute loan of 4 Bridgestone RE070 17 inch tyres from David Stelzer allowed MRT to run in the Clubsprint category. "We could not justify the purchase of some lower spec tyres to meet the Clubsprint rules, for just this event, as we normally run the Kumho V70a in out own track days every 2 months. David's offer was a generous one" Brett said.

Saturday dawned fine and sunny, arriving at the track, was a steady stream of competitors, MRT was represented, by its own car, plus a gaggle of others, including the dual entry by Fast Fours Magazine editor Nathan Luck in his Evo 7, plus a second entry under the Hot fours magazine, of a Subaru WRX. Both cars with a boat load of MRT goodies.

Bundled in the 1st group of 10 cars for the first 15 min session, Brett headed out to bed in the tyres and warm up the car to get some correct tyre pressures, but as he waited in pit lane after 3 laps, the RH brakes caught on fire, normally this is not an issue, but when the flames, grew higher than the side fender, it was time to head back out to put it out!

Later, a full strip down in the pit garage found the cause to be left over tyre rubber from the previous weekends trip to the drift Australia series where the Evo was used as a camera chase car! The rubber had found its way into the inner workings of the DBA5000 brake rotor and had been the cause of the fuel for the fire! Scrap session 1!

Soon after it was found that even with this the team was on target with a 1 min 20 sec run, easy for top five! The second session proved more valuable and the pressure was one, with several other teams nearing similar times. Brett and the team used the session to fine tune the tyre temps and pressures, working on the theory that a making the best of grip would pay off at the end of the day.

The third session would be the money shot, with less than 1/2 a tank of fuel, to give (minimum weight) and tyres now nearing best temps and wear, this would be it. Brett set off to do his best, 1 warm up lap and 2 flying laps would be the only chance, more laps and the tyres would go off and wear badly. The final best time was a 1 min 18.51 sec, ( a personal Best for Brett) good enough to gain 2nd outright, and clear third place by almost a second. In first was John Boston, a professional driver in a very well set up Honda S2000.

The position gave MRT the outright podium result for the day, and now a bonus was to compete in the top 5 shootout. A tough call as there was barely 3/4 of a lap to warm up and one flying lap, so the bravest on cold tyres would secure this session. As the day was drawing to close the MRT Evo X had one last fling at Oran parks track and the result was a well placed 3rd with a win again to John Boston's S2000.

Overall the day was a huge success with many owners having fun on the day with success ultimately going to the performance car industry headed up by Sydney's Ian Baker from High Octane Racing........

Next year can only be better!

Results here http://www.natsoft.com.au/cgi-bin/results.cgi?05/07/2008.ORAN
More info here http://www.superlap.com.au/index-2.html  

Brett still grinning with his trophies