The Lotus Elise will try to continue its giant killing run at Phillip Island
The Urban Arrangement / Report Factory Lotus team have a new problem; the crew are turning intodrivers in the GT series, leaving the team servicing and managing more cars with less people.
In scenes reminiscent of the Talladega Nights movie, the latest driving recruit is the J&S Automotive Racing work experience boy Garth Walden, who will be running at the Phillip Island round in the 55 Lotus Elise, known by the team as ”Black Betty”.
When a seat became available to drive Black Betty the crew from J&S conducted a series of test drives in Karts at Eastern Creek with young Walden setting the fastest lap time. Garth has managed to get some support from team sponsor Report Factory for the round, along with the ongoing assistance from Urban Arrangement and his work experience employer (Jeff Kimmings) at the humble workshop of J&S Automotive racing.
Black Betty’s normal pilot, Angela Coradine steps up into the Lotus Elise HPE of Eric Northwood who has taken off overseas for the round, leaving husband Peter Lucas s the only one driving his own car in the team. With this musical chairs game underway, J&S chief engineer Jeff Kimmings and team manager Peter Ross are left with a depleted crew (the rest are all now driving) and a dramatically increased workload for the weekend.
Kimmings says there’s no truth to the rumour that the strategy involves Garth carrying tools in car 55 to become a ‘mobile mechanic’ for the record fleet of Lotuses racing the Phillip Island circuit in both the GT Championship & GT Production classes (8 in all).
He admits it’s crossed his mind though “Young Garth is picking things up quickly and is proving to be pretty good on the tools; he could be very useful out there”.
All jokes aside, Walden is known to be a very handy steerer and is likely to extract the best from the 55 car which he personally fettles at the J&S Automotive Racing workshop along with mechanic Darren Wells. Wells is feeling left out with all the excitement surrounding Walden’s drive and has declared that he will focus on truck racing going forward where there is less competition for the drivers seat.
So we’re not sure who will be moving faster on the weekend, the drivers in the cars, or the depleted crew trying to keep all the cars serviced and despatched on time for the multitude of sessions over the weekend.