Queenslander Ricky Mitchell returned to the driver’s seat of his #19 Eagle Ignition Leads Cheetah for the first time in seven months recently as he contested the USA Sprintcars show mid week along with Round 9 of World Series Sprintcars at his home track in Brisbane. With one of the hottest fields ever seen in Brisbane, which included six Americans and four drivers who have held the Australian Championship crown, it was always going to a tough ask and despite the fact that Ricky was “a little rusty” the team was quietly pleased with the overall outcome.

“Some may question the suitability of such a tough week to come back to" said Car Owner Peter Mitchell. “But whilst it was always going to be tough, the driver standard is extremely high, and providing you have reasonable car speed you can learn much more competing than spectating. I am sure that a budding tennis professional wouldn’t pull out of a tournament just because Roger Federer was playing" commented Peter following the event.

With the format for the World Series being highly dependant on a good qualifying effort it was unfortunate that Ricky was outside of the all important heat inversion at both rounds of the Championship making it just about impossible to qualify for the feature races.”Despite missing the invert Ricky still raced well and he qualified for the B Main via the C Main on the Wednesday night but could not take up his position in the B because of a diff problem” commented Ricky’s Father Peter.

With it being extremely hard to progress to the main events the team used the track time as a virtual test session as throughout the three nights of racing they made several adjustments to the car, most of which worked to give Ricky a better setup and more car speed.

Ricky and the entire Mitchell Motorsport team are now looking forward with great optimism to their next appearance at the Brisbane International Speedway on the 23 of January, 2010.

The Mitchell Motorsport Team would like to thank the following corporate partners for their association with the 2009/10 Sprintcar season:

• Eagle Ignition Leads
• Wesfil Filters
• Penrite Oils
• Performance Wholesale
• Dayco
• Phil Michell Motorsport Media