Hansford Wins in Sydney: A Major Victory
Ryan Hansford has taken overall honours in round 4 of the 2024 Touring Car Master series in his Multispares Torana.
Ryan won two races in what the publication, Auto Action called it the “best ever” TCM round.
Ryan took the win in the Pro Masters class and equal first in the outright battle with Mustang driver Jamie Tilley. After dropping a few spots after Darwin, Ryan is now 3rd overall, 5 points behind Tilley and only 43 points behind Adam Garwood after Ryan closed the gap by 35 points at Sydney Motorsport Park.
SMP is always about tyre life, so from the first lap in practice Ryan and the team concentrated on a setup that looked after the tyres, particularly the rears. In practice, the team went with old tyres to see the speed of the Torana on tyres that had already done three races at a previous round of the championship. Ryan was 5th, 1.8 seconds off the quickest but certain the cars in front had at least two new tyres on their cars.
Next up was qualifying, and the plan was to do 2 fast laps and then pit. This means Ryan had to do one warm-up lap and find some clear track, then two flying laps and then one cool-down lap. After his 4 laps he was 3rd, but the cars around him did an extra one or two laps. It doesn’t seem much but Ryan wanted to go back out to try and get pole position, but the team agreement was 2 flying laps and “play the long game”.
As every round the first race is the reverse grid Trophy race, which some use to race up the front and others to test something or a different setting. Ryan and Brett have been talking about trying a softer front spring and SMP being tough on tyres and with so many corners leading into other corners, it was time to try them.
Starting on the 2nd last row and using old tyres, Ryan finished 4th and thought the car was much nicer to drive and was faster in the slow corners without hurting the speed on exit of the corner. The data told the same story, so the team decided to leave the softer front springs in for Race 1 with the 4 new tyres used in qualifying. The TCM rules are that from qualifying onward you only have 6 tyres to use, and the scrutineers mark them and watch closely that no more are used.
Ryan got a great start in race 1 from the second row and muscled his way to 2nd by the time the field was on the brakes into turn 2. From there to the last lap, the top 5 cars were never separated by more than .5 seconds with passes going on behind Ryan for 3rd. Brett reminded Ryan via the team radio to drive super smoothly, and don’t spin up or slide the rear tyres. And sure enough, series leader Adam Garwood, and young hot shot’s Rylan Gray and Joel Heinrich all started to slide their cars with 3 laps to go. On the last lap, Ryan passed Adam, and Jamie Tilley who was third then passed Adam, with Rylan Gray getting past Heinrich in what many say is the most exciting last lap of the TCM race ever. The top 5 best laps times were separated by .2 of a second and the top four went across the finish line separated by 1.5 seconds.
“That was a fantastic race,” said Ryan straight after getting out of the car. “We have been fast here before but last time we raced here in 2022, I just didn’t have the grip at the end of the race. Since we rolled the Multispares Torana out of the truck, we had a plan, and it has worked perfectly”
For Race 2, Ryan would start from the pole position and on the inside of the front row. With a short run to the super-fast turn 1, Ryan got another good start and was leading into turn 2. Saving their other two new tyres for Race 3, Ryan drove a brilliant defensive race to take another win.
TM, Brett Peters said after Race 2, “I thought that drive from Ryan was one of his best. He has had some brilliant wins including Race 1 yesterday, but it is hard to defend for 10 laps and not make one single mistake. You can move to the inside to stop being passed under brakes, but once you move, you can’t move back to take the ideal line, or you will get a penalty, so it takes real skill to get a great exit from that corner so the car behind doesn’t pass you down the next straight”
Race 3 was sure to be another belter, and Ryan again got a terrific start and led the field. By lap 3 Jamie Tilley was all over Ryan, who was again defending brilliantly. What the team didn’t know was that Ryan had no power steering. By mid-race, the TV showed some fluid coming out of the Torana, and when Brett mentioned it to Ryan he told him it is sure to power steering fluid and given how hard it is to hear each other at high revs, Ryan pushed on. He eventually finished 3rd, with the steering being too hard with the caster and camber these cars run even for a strong bloke like Ryan.
Once the Torana was back in the pits the team soon diagnosed the problem. One of the three bolts holding the alternator on had broken, which stopped the power steering as it used the same belt and whilst it worked for a short time, it also disabled the water pump. Ryan was very lucky to finish and as soon as the team got home, they pulled the engine out and sent it for an inspection.
Round 5 will be run in Melbourne as part of the Sandown 500 on September 13-15, with races telecast live on Foxsports and Kayo.
2024 TCM Calendar
| Bathurst 500 ( Feb 23/25 ) Fox TV / Kayo all races plus 1 FTA TV.Perth ( May 17/19 ) Fox TV / Kayo all racesDarwin ( June 14/16 ) Fox TV / Kayo 2 x FTA TVSydney SMSP ( July 19/21 ) Fox TV / Kayo Sandown ( Sept 20/22 ) Adelaide ( Nov 22/24 ) |
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