Even at your home track it is certainly different to get out of a super charged eight cylinder and jump into Turbo charged four cylinder car to try to compete against the best Sport Compact racers in the world.

On the first qualifier MR-1200 suffered a starter motor fault and was unable to make a pass. Ben and his crew (with the some technical help from good friend Nick of APC), was able to return to the staging lanes for the 2nd session.

The second qualifier was Ben's first full run for the week-end, and this left him in 5th spot with 8.161 / 163.34.   With only 1 session to go and a track that became very cool for the third session; we had to be cautious to make sure we got into the field. We were only on our second pass in the car for the week-end. Only just making the field was great and the team was relieved.

Ben feels that if he had been able to make the three qualifying sessions the outcome may have been different.

First round opponent Jim Magliveras brought on a red light and Ben was able to notch up his first Pro Compact round win. MR-1200 was a little off the pass against the eventual event winner and flying 7.162 / 186.64 Anthony Rodrigues in round 2. A bad miss-fire in round 3 stopped Benny from making a full powered pass.

All in all the whole team is very happy and thankful to Sport Compact Group, Castrol EDGE, plus all the fans who turned up to make J18 a great event. There was some talk of staying over and testing the Mr-1200 even more on the Wednesday test day Willowbank Bank has on the calendar. Ben feels they need only one or 2 more runs to get into the seven second zone and be amongst the hitters in Pro Compact. Team Brays’ heavy schedule to get ready for the start of the 08/09 season due to start in 3 weeks time, may put a stop to that as there is a lot going on at home base.