710 Motorsport take out class honours at Night Fever Enduro

This was going to be the biggest test for the little A3, we knew the car was fast but had been plagued by reliability issues throughout 2022 and 2023. Townsville proved that the car had what it takes to be a serious contender…we just had to get it to the finish line.

We headed into the weekend with a different frame of mind to make sure we didn’t get a repeat of past issues, fuel economy and driving the car well within ourselves was the plan on the Saturday just to make sure we got through 12 hours or racing to be in a position to attack on Sunday.

We needed to maximise our time on track and with 90 min maximum stint times in place we needed to try and push every stint as far as we could. With just 55 litres on fuel on board we could only drive flat out for around 65-70 mins so the drivers had to be fast but extremely light on fuel. Although there was some frustration that we couldn’t push hard we just needed to finish Saturday.

Shane Logan started the car in around seventh place and at the drop of the green flag latched onto a couple of ME1 cars in front. He sat behind them getting the tyres and brakes up to temp before picking them off one by one until after around 30 mins we had moved to second outright and leading our class. We were pulling away from the cars behind us and had no interest in taking the battle to DomDidIt ahead who was flying along.

We held this position until the first stop, handing over to Laszlo who would continue to build a gap over the field throughout his stint. By this point it became clear that we could nurse the car around getting good fuel milage while still pulling away. By the time Glen and Russell had completed their stints Don’s BMW had found trouble and we had now built a commanding lead over the entire field.

But the sun was slowing setting over Morgan Park and things were about to get crazy! As the darkness took over cars started to make contact with each other and during Laszlo’s second stint we were hit in the left rear by an Excel that didn’t see us. This destroyed our rim which had to be quickly replaced as well as a talking to from race control to understand what had happened on track.

After a good night sleep we took the green flag at 8am with Laszlo back behind the wheel, with such a huge gap on the field our plan of pushing hard was thrown out of the window and fuel saving and maintaining position was back on the menu again. We maintained pace with the Farm Find BMW who had come storming through the pack after some early issues on Saturday but they weren’t fast enough to catch us on track, it would take us to have some kind of issues to let them back in the race…

Shane was behind the wheel settling into a groove when he noticed something wasn’t right… the race seat started moving around every time the car went around a right hand bend. Realizing this was a major issue we pulled the car in to find the seat mounting had cracked and the seat was now only attached on the left hand side. We managed to weld the mount back together and get back on track but our 9 lap lead had turned into a 2 lap deficit to the cars in front. We now sat second in class and third outright.

It would take more than fast driving to get us back in contention but our pit master Barry was all over it, short stinting drivers and pitting under double yellow’s for fuel to get us back on the same pit windows as our competitors. It seemed counter intuitive at the time to pit and change drivers when we were behind but once the other cars started to take their stops under green flag conditions, we started to pull them back.

Glen took over the driving and drove a beautiful stint to put us back in the class lead and second outright over the Buccaneers Subaru. At this stage we were catching the BMW and Glen came into hand over the car to Laszlo again to bring it home with just 60 mins remaining. But unfortunately, on his second lap we had a low oil pressure warning come up. We had no choice but to pit again for a quick top up of oil to get us to the end, but this dropped us back behind the Subaru once again, with 45 mins to go Laz set about catching and passing the Subaru for class honours.

Lapping around 2 seconds per lap quicker than the Subaru we were watching Laz slowly pulling them back and with around 10 mins to go passed them to retake the class lead and second outright. He was also gaining incredibly quickly on the Farm Find BMW but we ran out of time and took the chequered flag only about half a lap behind them.

We completed 657 laps (1945 kms) and the car had made it through! It was such a massive relief from all the team just to finish the race and although the final results don’t show how fast and reliable the car was. This was our last enduro for 2023 and was an amazing was to finish off what has been a frustrating year in the A3.

Team Steinard came home strong with third place in class and sixth outright with 639 laps (53 laps ahead of fourth place). It had been quite some time since we had seen two Audi’s on the podium so it was a very special moment.

A huge thanks to all the team that makes this possible… Russell Greaves for building the car and making it bullet proof, also jumping in the car and punching out fast lap times when needed. Laszlo for his unbridled enthusiasm, Glen for being an absolute legend in and out of the car, Shane for being the team chef and driver and Barry for being the best pit boss in pit lane. Thanks also to Cruise and Dylan for being our official photographers for the weekend and a massive thanks and congratulations to our team mates Darren Goddard, Darren Holland, Bill Goulding and Robbie Warne from #112 who help out in every pitstop, we may be in different cars but we work as one team.