M&M Racing Team Report
by Barry Mayers

All of the spectators where anxiously awaiting The Barbados Auto Racing League's July 5th event, as this was going to be the first event where all the “big guns” in group 3C & 4 would be in attendance. It was also the long awaited debut of the new Suzuki SX4.

The days leading up to the event included some long hours of work on the Suzuki SX4 & the Ford Focus, with quite a bit of testing. Since the Suzuki has not done any major racing mileage since new, we had quite a few small problems over the course of the weekend. Some of these problems included losing the alternator belt, the back muffler catching on fire & over heating the rear tyres.

On Saturday Roger qualified on pole in the Ford, while I was faced with another problem with the Suzuki...a rear CV shaft broke on the warm up lap leading up to qualifying. Since we have very little spares for the car, I thought that it would have been impossible to fix the rear cv shaft. With some small miracle Roger uses the same CV shafts on his car, so we worked into the early hours of Sunday morning to get my car all fixed and ready for the race.

The first race was quite easy for Roger, as he started in first and won the race out right. Since I was not able to qualify, I started in fifth position on the grid. For the entire race I was fighting with Mark Maloney, as I was faster in certain sections of the track but then he would leave me down the straight away. Further to that, my tyres overheated after about the third lap, making it hard to continue to fight with Mark. At the end of the race I finished third in class, behind Mark.

For the second race, we had to remove the diffuser on the Suzuki as the heat in the rear of the car was excessive which was helping to overheat the tyres. The removing of this made my lap times drop 1.5 seconds a lap. Roger again started in first position and had a trouble free race and brought home his car with another win. I started in fifth position on the grid, and at the start of the race I had a bit of contact & wheel rubbing with Douglas Maloney, causing my front bonnet to loose two of its clips. Despite this, I continued in the race and brought my car home in second place in class.

For the final race, Roger was once again in 1st position on the grid. Stuart Williams was able to get a better start than Roger and for the first few laps, Roger chased down Stuart. When Stuart made a slight mistake, Roger was able to use this opportunity to pass him, which again gave Roger his third victory for the day. I had a little more of an eventful race, starting fourth on the grid. On the first lap I was able to pass Douglas Maloney when he made a small mistake, but he managed to pass me a few laps later when my tyres started to over heat. Mark Maloney also made an excellent pass on me in about the fifth lap, but I was able to pass him again on the next lap, putting me in second place in my group. Then on the final lap, Stuart Williams had a mechanical problem and I was able to pass him to take the victory in the final lap. The Suzuki's first victory!!!

For the event, Roger had three wins and I had a 1st, 2nd & 3rd place for the day. Between now and the Williams International meet on August 30th, we have a massive list of things to do so that hopefully both of us can challenge for a new track record time in August.

Thank you to all of our sponsors for all of your support, with out you it would not be possible! - Simpson Motors, Shell V-Power, Chefette, Ignition & Illusion Graphics.