Just back from Wakefield Park where the annual Wakefield 300 enduro was run.

I was team manager and strategist for the Proton Satria team of Shane Tanner and Daniel Flanagan.

Saturday was a busy day with Andrew and Tristan coming up to help sort out the car, Andrew spent most of the day trying to get the steering sorted, plus fixing a new mount for the battery after it tried to escape from the car.

Shane qualified the car in 20th out of 21, a bit disappointed but we knew that there was heaps of potential in the car. Daniel was to start the race on Sunday.

Today there were a couple of Production car races, with Shane driving the Proton and Daniel in his usual car the Hyundai Sonata. Daniel ended up with a couple of 4th places and Shane in 6th in both races.

The Wakefield 300 was over 137 laps so 300km or 3hrs max. With an assortment of cars including one of the ex Diet Coke Super Tourer BMW,s a replica of Lightning McQueen (Series 6 RX7) to some Future Racers, a new Mini, 2 other Protons and a couple of Peugeots and smattering of fast MX5's.

Daniel had a great start and picked off several cars on the first lap, then he settled into a good rythym with mid 14's our plan for his stint. I made the call that we were only going to do the compulsory pit stop and that was it. We would have enough fuel to do a one stopper. So Daniel stayed in for 64 laps, came in and we changed drivers, filled the car up with fuel, reset tyre pressures and filled the water bottle and then Shane was out on the track again.

We thought that with the speed of the top cars we would be looking at doing around 115 laps, but as we were up to lap 120 we thought we maybe in a good position. Shane was complaining that he had run out of water and needed a drink, the comment from all of the team was HTFU and keep going, we could be in with a shot of getting a good position. So Shane stayed out while I did some calculations on fuel. Anyway we ended up doing 128 laps, 9 laps down on the leaders but first in class and 8th outright.

Chris Clearihan won the race in a Future Racer from Jack Elsegood in a Falcon V8 Ute.

Next event hoping to do the 12 Hour at Bathurst, I might even get a drive this time:)

Ray