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Here she is at her first official outing; the 1989 Nasport
event at Westwood. Our plan for that weekend was largely focused on
sorting the car as our testing time had been limited prior to that.
Although we did not have unrealistic expectations for it's first race,
we still thought it would be interesting to see how the car stacked
up against the more modern tubeframed competitors from the U.S. At
the time, it was still possible to be competitive in GT at the National
level with a tub as was demonstrated by guys like Jon Norman, Jon
Koobation, Norm Balzer and Collin Jackson. To a certain degree, all
of them subscribed to the standard American approach of making their
cars faster, ie. throw more money at it. But inspite of this, the
tub's days were clearly numbered. |
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At the time, the only colors I could ever see that car
in were factory Fiat three-tone blues. |
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Hmmm... in hind sight, she probably could have used
a splash of color. But the car looked all business and that was the
desired effect. |
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Note the inside front wheel. Corner balancing was not
quite right yet. Neat capture though! |
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Once you got around the hairpin, you needed plenty of
grunt for the climb up to the Esses. The motor was transplanted from
our E-Prod Spider with minor changes in order to make the event. It
still made good power but after a couple of seasons of propelling
our 124 in battle it was a bit tired. Unfortunately, the Brava DNFd
early in the race. I shut her down in turn two with a spun bearing.
This was a testament to the importance of good lubrication. |
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Not the best video caps but certainly a better day at
the races. The fresh motor ran strong all day and a change from 15”
wheels back down to the 13s helped the gearing considerably. Westwood’s
start/finish straight put a real premium on power so to be fast and
carry that speed you needed to carry sufficient revs. If you could
hit fifth gear just out f the Esses on to the front straight, you
were moving. On this weekend, the Brava was untouchable. |
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