PLENTY of ideas have been spawned over a beer at pubs across Australia, but for Jack Elsegood a quiet drink led to racing at Mount Panorama.
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The owner of Manly’s Donny’s Bar offered to sponsor a V8 Ute for Elsegood to race at Bathurst and he jumped at the chance.
“I really had no intentions to race this year,” he said.
“[But] If you are going to come back to a race track it has got to be this one, this one or Phillip Island.
“I had ute rounds wins here and raced in GTs. There was a utes race here at Easter time and I did that, I’ve also done some stuff here in the 6 Hour, the 12 Hour, 24 Hour in our group.”
When practice got underway on Thursday morning, it marked the first time the 2009 V8 Utes champion had done a lap in the category in three years.
He did not take long to adjust – clocking the sixth quickest lap in practice two – but then he struck trouble.
”We had really good speed in practice and we were expecting top five, but coming down Conrod Straight the diff let go, the diff blew up” Elsegood said.
“So we replaced that and put it all together again and were checking it out, but there was a bit of a knock. So we pulled that out and put another diff in the car. We put that together, spun the tail shaft and it was still making a noise, so we replaced the tail shaft.
“Then we spun it around again and it still made a noise, so they replaced the gear box.”
Those problems meant Elsegood started Friday’s race from the rear of the grid. He again struck trouble as he ended up with a DNF.
