The skies dawned blue and sunny today in Perth, the last day of training before Quali on Saturday. Our first training session (T3) went very well and I was feeling very confident in this difficult track.

After pulling off the track at the end of my time slot, I looked down to reduce the power back to a cool down setting and noticed that the engine had very low oil pressure. After circling for a few seconds above the race track, I realized the pressure was not returning to a normal level so I elected to divert into Langley Park, which is our race airport for the weekend. Langley Park is pretty much co-located with the race track so that was the safe option as Jandakot Airport where we were operating was about 10 miles away and it was nothing but city between the track and Jandakot. Needless to say, the safe option was to put it down at Langley Park.

We have worked on the plane all afternoon and evening and think we have located the problem. It’s been frustrating as it’s not an easy problem to pinpoint. However, we think we have it now.

Since I missed the all important Training 4 session today, I am the “wind dummy” who will lead off the group in Qualifying. Not the greatest place to start from but those are the breaks. I will give it my best and see where we end up. Even though I missed a good amount of training, I was pretty comfortable on the track in this mornings session.

Perth is proving to be a very difficult track and there have been a ton of pylon hits and penalties. I am thinking that this should settle down for Quali and race day. However, it’s anyone’s guess who will come out on the podium this weekend. If we can fix our machine, I hope we will be in the running again.

All the best from down under,

Mikey G