Spec on the car seems to be

1) Very, very light. Perspex windows, drilled hinges, fiberglass bonnet and boot, 10 litre fuel tank etc.....

2) Engine, 1500 pushrod overbored 40 thou, twin side draft 40mm Dellortos, weapons grade head with Jaguar valves and 10.5:1, Subaru contactless igniton, total drain igniton (i.e. no generator/alternator), Mazda pistons, very very lumpy cam, and goodness knows what else.

3) Gear box has been close ratio but has been returned to standard which suited the local track better.

4) Suspension: Rear has the Lotus(?) setup with single leaf and tramp rods, front is just hard, with a huge anti-sway bar and unboosted disk brakes.

The car is quite rough with a number of on the track repairs to the body work with special brush painting in the regularly hit areas.

5) The test day......

The local track for those of us fortunate enough to live in Wellington (NZ) is a solid two hours drive away. Add another 30mins for towing the trailer and refuelling and some more time for getting the car off the trailer etc and you have got six hours (return) before you can even warm the tyres. I am a newcomer to racing so perhaps this is all normal but it certainly is a big slice out of your week. The track is called Manfeild (I tried to send you the layout but I could not work out how to save it so the frame attached, check it out at www.motorsport.org.nz) and is something like 3.03 kms long and touted as a challenging and technical track.

Picture it, I have driven the car about 1500meters, I have never driven in a race before, I have never even seen this circuit, I have splashed out and bought a flash Momo race suit and Kevlar helmet, my fiance and a bunch of friends have made the trip to watch, there are a dozen or so hardened racers milling about with their various cars and this is the most challenging track in the country!

At Manfeild you exit the pits immediately into a sharp sweeper. Hardly anybody saw me almost spin. Around the circuit I went a few times and the overwhelming impression was that unless we could dial some oversteer out of the car then I would need a wiper on the passengers window when it rained. She is very very slippery in the rear.

When we drove the car around on the street when we first purchased her I was very impressed by the way it revved but not too impressed by the brakes. The brakes (which are unboosted disk front and drum rear in a tandem circuit) improved once I got some heat into them but had a heap of pedal talk which I guess is a warped disk (or two?) but we had no race gas (104 octane in NZ, pump gas is 96 Octane Unleaded) and I could not get the motor to rev as well as on the test drive. When we tested her on the street we did not go past 7500rpm although the engine gave every indication that she would freely go out to over 8000 but on the track I was struggling to make 7000. Fuel I expected and after five laps I came in. We all had a chat and everyone was in agreement that the car looked great trashing around but that my lines were appalling and somebody suggested that if I kept the car pointing forward instead of sideways I might have a better chance of passing someone. There was a gentleman there with a mildy prepared 944 Turbo who was lapping only 4-5 seconds faster than me so a fresh tank of fuel and some better lines and we might be able to do Henry proud.

There was still too much fuel in the tank to bother filling with race gas and as we had nowhere to dump the remaining low octane stuff I figured the best remedy was combustion so the troops got the stopwatch ready, I tightened up the harness and off.

The track was clear as I exited the pits as I took a reasonable line into the sweeper. A nice four wheel drift ended with a little oversteer and then the car settled for the change up into third, 6500rpm in third and then off the throttle for a gentle apex and then a slight left hander to set up for the next corner, on with the loud pedal and a miss develops. Check the oil pressure, OK so back on the gas, the miss gets worse. Look behind to see if I am holding up traffic...... hello, where has the track gone? Smoke. Lots of it. Hit the emergency kill, wrestle the wheel to throw her into the grass, come to a standstill and what the hell is that popping noise. The power is off, the engine is dead, the car is stationary but there is some bugger thumping the floor with a mallet. Grab the extinguisher, wrestle out of the harness and out of the car. Big clouds of white billowy stuff slowly getting smaller.

The track marshall hollers "tow her?". Prick.

Six hours of travelling, a few hundred dollars, dragged the friends out, took the day off work and I get five and a quarter laps. About eight minutes.

They towed it back to where the trailer was and after a few anxious moments the cause was identified. Head Gasket. It could have been a lot worse I guess and the 'smoke' was steam and the thumping under the car must have been water boiling in the exhaust.

Unfortunately I did not pack a spare gasket or head so we went home. The car is apart now and it looks at though the head is cracked. What came first I do not know but the rest of the engine's internals look great, albeit a little wet.

As you know, the head will be away for a little while and you sit there on the obligatory fuel drum or tool box and think, Hmmmmm, that exhaust manifold is a little bit scruffy, perhaps a bit of a sand and a paint, come to think of it the engine bay could do with a tidy up too, while I have the compressor out perhaps the cockpit floor might like a touch up etc. etc. etc....... I gutted it. Windows, wiring, seats, harnesses, rollcage...... everything but the dash and suspension.

I am an impatient man and it WILL be welded, sanded, cleaned, modified and resprayed by early April. I will get the engine back together before I do anything with the rear end as eight minutes is probably not a sensible evaluation period.

Happy motoring.

Jason.