After spending months in and out of therapy getting over the disappointing loss of their 2008 Jimco at Finke in June last year, Prout Racing has adopted a brighter outlook for 2010 aided by the arrival of their new 2009 Series Jimco.
While the chassis is another single seater it is longer and lighter than the last one.A massive amount of time has gone into design of the car and Bill Croft from Unicap joined Brad and Shane Wilson on a trip to America to finalise all the fitout details with the Jimco team.
The finished product is unbelievable.This time around Prout Racing elected to have more fabrication work done by Jimco and they designed a body kit with Larry Stalk from Zoom Factor Fabrication. Brad said the result from Larry was a hand crafted masterpiece.He said being the quickest car in Australia is a tall order now days but I hope to have at least boxed in the best looking car!
Red Devil Energy Drinks have stuck by the team.Bilstein have stepped up again and supported them with Bilstein Blackhawks and All German Motorsports have again provided wheels and tyres and US logistical support.
The engine is another Shane Wilson V8 from Shane Wilson Race Engines.Brad said he wanted to keep a few secrets but said it was going to be very similar to the last one.
With the time pressures to get it all done for pre-season testing, it was great that Shane could do all engine design from Australia and join Bill and myself on the trip to the states to finalise the heads, intake manifold, exhaust, dry sump system and other key components.The team used Danzio Performance Engineering from the USA to source the engine parts and put together a pulley stack and mock-up engine for Jimco.
All the engine bits are now back with Shane and we are confident the final race assembly by Shane and tuning by Bill Croft will give us a package to keep pace with the ever so popular twin turbos.But only time will tell.
We have about a months work to do on the chassis and Kaleb Schmidt and Todd Glesson are again going to be working with Bill Croft and I to hopefully be ready for testing in late February.
I cant wait for the start of the 2010 Australian Offroad Racing Championship in Hyden at Easter and would like to thank all the supporters for their well wishes after the Finke incident and their ongoing encouragement for us to resume our involvement in what is Australias best form of motorsport.
