Well, another fine day at the office... at Sandown Raceway again. The MD of our blood banking equipment supplier (Lateral-Grifol) also happens to drive a Maserati Trofeo GT3 in the Australian GT Championship. Jim Manolios finished 2nd in class this year, foiled by a split intake plenum. He also happens to be part-owner (with Rod Wilson) of the Ultimate Drive Day concern, so his rewards days for clients tend to be pretty exciting. This year for our delectation, Jim provided 2x Maserati GTS's (one auto, one manual (paddle-shift)) and a Quatroporte (literally, four-door). After the obligatory technical session in the morning (new product launch) we were turned loose on the track, firstly with some familarisation driving - slalom, braking and avoidance excersizes - then full laps of the track. This year as co-drivers to make sure we didn't do anything stupid in these $300,000+ cars, we had Dean Canto, Luke Youlden, Tony D'Alberto and Josh (who's last name I missed, but is just back from the UK where he was doing various Formula racing). And interspersed with our own driving, we were treated to hot laps by Jim and Rod in the Trofeo GT3's. Point of interest... at Sandown, because of the proximity of residential areas, the race cars MUST have exhaust noise outputs (on an overcast day) of <75dB - less than a legal road car! The GTS's now have a 4.7L (up from 4.2L) V8, putting out around 440bhp - so much quicker than the old 4.2L we drove last year. The suspension on the Q4 has been softened from the older model, so now it's more of a luxo-barge, with a bit of body-roll/wallow and some understeer if pushed. I'd still have one in my garage, tho! I managed to up my personal land-speed record to 218kph at the 200metre braking point on the main straight in the manual GTS - fantastic! I did take some pics, but these official Maserati videos show so much more. GTS Quattroporte I hope you're not too jealous! (NOT!)
I'm not jealous, much ....... Let's see, compare fanging the Magna in a 'khana at DECA vs fanging Mazzas at Sandown - YOU WIN! You had better watch out for Mikey the Ripper at Renmark. Josh ? was possibly Josh Hunt. 75db measurement does not relate to the legal 90db measurement as the distance from noise source to point of measurement is greater; same 75db limit applies to all our track days at Sandown.
I was out there in my Z34, but finished up at lunchtime .... I have a hole in the headers where the steering UJ rubs on the zorst which is now out of the car and being repaired. Who knows a good tig-welder who is a guru on 304 stainless with 1.5mm wall-thickness (not a lot of material to work with unfortunately). I didn't realise Jim and Rod were out there (more the fool me). And for the record, whilst Jim came 2nd in the Vic State Series for Sports Cars he was the first placed member of Prod Sports Car Racing Vic in the state series and will get the club gong early in the new year.
Thanks for setting me straight re the championship... when I watched the Bathust telecast (Saturday) I realised the Championship was still alive and therefore must have misinterpretted what Jim said. But surely you must have seen the Trofeo Racing pantech outside the pits... it's big and white and hard to miss. Dredz was right behind it. We were in the conference center in the main grandstand all morning so sadly I didn't see you.
