Welcome to Paddy North Racing

Hey everyone, hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year and managed to catch some of the excellent racing that has been happening round the country.

For various reasons we were real late hitting the track this season but finally got the 46E LRC Monaro out on track in early December for the first round of the Elf Super Cup here in Blenheim, a race win first up certainly boosted the confidence and confirmed that some of the changes we had been working on in the car would pay dividends. A flat tire in race 2 saw us qualify down in 8th spot for the 25 lap feature, however a good race plan saw us work our way up to third spot behind Shane Carey and winner Ian Burson.

The following night was round two in Nelson which seen us finish 3rd spot again leaving us in 3rd spot overall in the series after the first two rounds which I see as an encouraging start to the season. The Elf series has been expanded to seven rounds this year with additional rounds being Invercargill and Ruapuna.

We have just returned from round three in Invercargill (25th Jan) and again an encouraging result finishing 2nd spot. Again Burson was too good for everyone else and Ritchie Taylor coming home in 3rd. We are now in second place overall only half a point ahead of Mark Osborne in the immaculate looking 16C Hypermac. For round results and all other info ELF related please visit www.elfsupercup.co.nz

Night two in Invercargill saw the running of the South Island title… almost déjà vu from Friday with Burson taking the trophy again (making history by winning for the third time!!) 46E coming home a close 2nd and Osborne in 3rd spot. A big thanks to the Riverside club for their hospitality and a well prepared track and awesome meeting.

As alluded to earlier we have been working on some changes in the car. This is our third season with this chassis and I feel we are making some good progress in getting it to where I need it. The current changes mainly lie around weight placement, centre of gravity and front roll centre as we have constantly struggled to achieve front end grip over the last two seasons. We had it to a point where it appear to be reasonably balanced, fast off the corners and down the straight-aways but forever struggled to get nice rotation into and through mid turn.

I was often being accused of balking (purposely braking to upset following car) but was finding the car so tight (front end push) through the corner that I had to brake a second time to get the car to fully turn around the corner. We lifted the engine higher in the chassis, and changed front roll centre with some reengineered front suspension arms and stub axels. Overall I am happy with the progress and we head to the Glen this weekend for a little more testing and a final run before the NZ Title there in another two weeks.

My son Brad has been hard at work and created us a Facebook page which is proving real good for keeping a bit more info flowing and providing some interacting with our fans and fellow competitors and also gives us the ability for instant updates on race night. He has also sorted us wrist bands as give ways at the track along with new posters with the help of Steve the Maori (STM productions). On top of all this he has also taking a bit of a liking to the Go-Pro camera he persuaded me to buy and has been producing some real good in car footage with you can check out on our YouTube site.

Thanks to Dave you will also notice a bit of a revamped website. Hopefully between this site and the FB page you can keep up with all the happenings within the team and all the action as it happens at the track. Of course we would rather just see you trackside enjoying the action live.

Next big meeting for us is the NZ Champs as we further our quest to get those elusive "NZ" letters on the side of the car.

Take care

Paddy