Barry Pritchett has announced a new member to TRacing after a hiatus for the team that were forced to scale back to a single vehicle in 2017.
Ursula and Barry have been a staple of MG & IB Racing for the past few seasons often running their two TR6 Triumphs in inversed colour scheme until unfortunately Ursula was involved in an accident at Winton Motor Raceway which wrote off the car.
“As many people know the white TR6 was written off in a crash last year, due to the relative values of the cars these days we haven’t been able to replace the car for a reasonable cost. A bare bones shell is still $15,000+ before we build a cage and do paint and panel to bring it to our standards” Pritchett commented.
The MG TF Cup car purchased has some pedigree, it was originally purchased by Phil Chester for Glen Wood to campaign under the ‘Monti’ banner for part of 2013 and the full 2014 seasons before Wood stepped into the Sebring V8. The car had some great battles with Cody Hill throughout 2014 and set the fastest laps a F/TF Cup car has set to date. The car was then campaigned by Vince Gucciardo under the GB Galvanizing banner for 2015 in his debut season before making sporadic appearances in 2016 including being driven by Rhys Howell at the Festival of Speed that year. Undoubtable one of the best and fastest Cup cars in the world.
“Ursula loved her TR and it was a very nice car and it was a difficult situation for us, we sat down and realised how much we love MG & IB racing, we don’t have the same issues as some other categories with driving standards, everyone talks to each other and we have a genuinely good time. That lead to chatting with a few people and Phil Chester put an offer on the table that made sense, we could get back to both racing in the series and the running costs are affordable, and the car was affordable. It made sense…”
Barry is excited to get both on track again, and after both competing at the AROCA club on 14th April and Ursula starting to find her feet in ‘red’ now after some time out of the seat. “It has been great so far, Phil Chester came along to help on my first two days in the car and Vince Gucciardo has been fantastic with some driving tips to get around the mid engine challenge and setting up a proper race car”
The biggest challenge for Pritchett is stepping into something with a lot more adjustability, “im used to Group S regs, you cant adjust and develop anything whereas this has big brakes, a nice close gearbox, lots of mechanical grip, lots of setup ability. Its 30 years newer but it’s a fun challenge for me. We both will enter Phillip Island in May and we are looking forward to having a lot of fun again, the TRacing team is back!”
It is great to have both back on track for 2018, Welcome to the dark side Barry and welcome back Ursula!
