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[6-HOUR] Mazda vs BMW - Class C
by Stefan Bartholomaeus
Mazda versus BMW in Class C
The Grand Prix Mazda team secured their favouritism for Class C honours in the Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour, after clocking the fastest time in qualifying by over eight tenths of a second.
While the Jake Camilleri/Scott Nicholas driven MPS enters the race in strong form, it's a different story for the Osbourne Motorsport cars.
The Osbourne team had far from a trouble-free day, with both the Osbourne/Rick Bates and Hadrian Morrall/Graham Moore cars suffering from mechanical issues.
“Rick set a strong qualifying lap, and then did a couple of cool down laps and the turbo went,” explained Osbourne.
“We’ve been plagued with endless dramas with turbos on this car, we’re at a rate of about one turbo every 90 minutes.
“As for the other car, it tore the engine mounts out of the bottom of the gearbox, so a little heli-coil work and we’ll fix that. Better luck I suppose that it happened now.”
The class’s other contender, the Shire Conveyancer BMW 130i of Allan Sheppard/Garth Duffy, is counting on the unreliability of the Mazdas for success on Sunday.
“I can’t say I miss having all of those problems,” joked Sheppard, a previous Mazda MPS campaigner.
“We know we can’t match the pace of Jake, but these BMWs have been bullet-proof in the past.
“We’ll make up some time by doing less tyre changes - that’s really our main strength.
“Garth Duffy has come on board this weekend done a fantastic job in the car so far – I don’t mind being slower than him at all. It’s going to be a hare and tortoise race, with the hare and the tortoise running in the same car!”
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