Jamboree 2010 - Team Talk - Rodney Rehayem
Rodney Rehayem’s back-halved Mazda RX3 was never supposed to be racing at J20 but after a convincing discussion with Jamboree promoter Ray Box, the car was loaded onto the truck and sent north from the Sydney workshop to the sunny delights that Queensland holds.
Full team report over the fold.
While preparing and driving a low seven-second race car is a big job in itself, doing so while still playing an integral role in a Pro Turbo team is a whole other deal. Not only did Rod have to pedal his own car but the clutch setup on the Pac Performance Mazda 6 was still his responsibility.
Down to racing then and despite the expertly prepared Willowbank Raceway surface, Rod’s RX3 suffered from serious wheel-spin on the first two passes of qualifying. Team principle and head tuner, Rocky Rehayem, described it as, “the worst wheel-spin the car has ever seen,” something no one in the crowd missed.
The third pass was much better when it came to the raw numbers of the pass, a 7.456sec, but while assessing the condition of the vehicle after the run, the team quickly discovered a problem with the driveline. It came in the form of a wrecked clutch and broken ‘candlestick’ in the ‘box – the part of the racing transmission that the throw-out bearing runs on.
A long thrash to repair the ‘box lasted until the early hours of Sunday morning and while it was less than ideal, the team decided that they would have to make do with what they had. Thankfully the clutch and gearbox cooperated on Sunday with Rodney winning all three rounds of racing to progress to the final against the hard-charging Craig Dyson in the gorgeous black R100.
Coming into the water in the final the clutch pedal went to the floor and stayed there. Another gearbox failure, this time the clutch fork, brought an end to the meeting for Rod and the team who would have been serious contenders for the Modified Compact win. Despite the unexpected mechanical gremlins, Rod and the team were delighted to have travelled to J20 at the last minute, top qualified and made the final in a tough field.
