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[BOAT] Tough return for Pretty at Melton
by Sean Henshelwood
(Archived)
Tough return for Pretty at Melton
Melton, VIC - October 25, 2008
Reigning Group A Australian and world champion Nathan Pretty made his return to jetsprinting at Melton at the wheel of Greg Harriman’s 321…IGNITION Group A boat for the penultimate round of the 2008 Australian championships.
“With Teresa Southern alongside Brooke Dixon in Nathan’s usual ride, he had nowhere to run at Melton in an effort to gain valuable miles prior to the forthcoming world championships,” Harriman said. “So I made the offer for him to ‘B’ drive our boat for two reasons. One, it’s great for the sport to have Nathan involved, and two, to help me set the boat up prior to the world titles..”
Immediately inside the top ten in a top class field, Pretty admitted that there was plenty of improvement to make with the boat, Harriman admitting that having Nathan on board had already improved the boat and provided him with a valuable benchmark.
“There’s no doubt that Nathan is a class act in one of these things, and his feedback has been fantastic. Sadly it seems to have proven what I expected, and that is that we’re down on performance to where we need to be, both horsepower and boat dynamics.
“We’ll go away between now and Albury’s final round and see what we can find. We certainly did discover a couple of things though that helped us, the boat has never turned better, but the performance characteristics were just flat.. We made some fin changes as well as some blade adjustments in the jet unit, but we just couldn’t get it to feel sharp..” Greg admitted.
“It’s not bad,” Nathan added, “but it’s certainly a different boat to Brooke Dixon’s Sprintec, no question. It doesn’t feel like it has the power of Brooke’s boat despite there being similar engine specs, so there is definitely an issue that needs to be sorted.”
By the close of qualifying the two teams were ranked outside of the top ten, Nathan setting the best time of the day with a 49.756 on his third run, some five seconds slower than eventual winner Slade Stanley.
“I suppose it was both disappointing and rewarding at the same time,” Greg agreed. “We missed the top ten, although in our final run, I got to within half a second of Nathan, so that gives me confidence as a driver against someone of his calibre, but importantly we learnt a lot about the boat, so we should be able to improve significantly by Albury.
“Col Parish has taken the boat back with him to Wangaratta to have a good look at the whole setup, and with Nathan expected to drive alongside us again at Albury, we should be pretty right by the time the world championships come around..”
The 321…IGNITION Racing team now heads north to Albury for the final round of the Australian Superboat Championships on Saturday, November 15 before packing the boats in a container for the trip to New Zealand for the world titles.
Race one of the UIM World Jetsprint Championships is scheduled for Meremere (south of Auckland) on January 3-4, whilst round two will be a week later at Featherston (north of Wellington – January 10-11).
The Albury facility is located in Fallon Street Albury, adjacent to the Albury Airport (VICROADS Map Ref: 321 S14).
321..IGNITION Racing are proudly supported by; 321 IGNITION Magazine, Brumby’s, Parish Automotive, SKIN Industries Pickering Smash Repairs, and Meridian Motorsport.
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2008 Australian Superboat Championships
Group A (points after round#6 of 7)
1. Slade Stanley (287), 2. Phonsy Mullan (271), 3. Greg Mercier (228), 4. Rohan Smith (187), 5. Ted Sygidus (177), 6. Brooke Dixon (166), 7. Kevin Laugesen (158), 8. Robert Coleman (121), 9. Teresa Southern (98), 10. Steve Lackas (60), 11. Tremayne Jukes (56), 12. Greg Harriman (45), 13. Tim Howell (44), 14. Adrian Kemp (29), 15. Brett Shellcott (24), 16. Peter Monger (23), 17. Damien O’Leary (20), 18. Darren Watkins (20), 19. Daniel Walton (19), 20. Ged Elphinstone (17), 21. Kim Legerski (13), 22. Jeff Flemming (10), 23. Jo Shellcott (10), 24. Matt Legerski (10), 25. Simon Zarb (9), 26. Nathan Pretty (6), 27. Shane Loughnan (5), 28. Doug Fraser (5), 29. Mick Manini (5)
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