The far north Queensland city of Cairns played host to the 2012 running of the Queensland State Formula 500 Championship last weekend, June 9th and for Brisbane based Hyper pilot Charlie Brown, the weekend was quite rewarding.

Having travelled from his work location near Newcastle, some 2200 klms away overnight, Charlie and his racing sibling Kristin were greeted in the sunshine at Cairns Airport by the Perth based Hyper Racing owner Dave Hedington and his driver Jason Pryde, who were running a 3rd Hyper for the Aussie Trackwear supported team.

From the outset in hot laps, Charlie was feeling satisfied with the performance of his Jettco powered Hyper, albeit with a small concern with a minor oil leak that reared its head. A couple of quick fine tuning runs was all Charlie needed in preparation of his title defence, commenting after hot laps- “I haven’t raced here before, but the track is like most I’ve seen, it is oval shaped and has some dirt on it, so I guess we should be ok. The car feels good, the motor feel good, I feel ok, and so we’ll see how the night rolls on.”

As the qualifying races played out, Charlie was well on his way to a successful title defence given he was all but dominant in each of his 3 events. “I had a pretty good run in my heats really, although Mick Pronger really did give me the hurry up in our first heat. His on track experience can be really challenging sometimes, I’m just thankful I was able to keep him behind me.” Brown quipped prior to the all important Championship final.

With the 9 qualifying heats done and dusted, the grid was set for the decider. As was expected, P1 was filled by the defending Queensland and current New South Wales Champion Brown, grided up along side his much more experienced combatant in Mick Pronger, so the race was destined to be an all out battle of youth versus experience, and early in the proceedings, it was exactly that. At the first wave of the green, it was Pronger who bolted, only to have a caution thrown by the stewards. Take 2 and this time Charlie was not giving Pronger an inch, heading the field into turn 1 and not being seriously challenged again for the remainder of the race.

Post race Charlie Brown, in retaining his Qld #1 commented “that was a fun race; everything went my way out there. The lapped traffic fell at the right time, it was really good. We made a couple of changes just before we went out in our last heat, as I was chatting with Dave from Hyper trying to get just a little more out of the car, the changes were great and made the car enjoyable to drive in the final.” He continued “without support from people like Des Korn from Korn Racing, Aussie Trackwear, Send With Us, and Hyper Racing, I wouldn’t be out here racing. I also want to say congratulations to Nathan and Mick Pronger for their podium results; it’s always good to race hard with these guys. Mum and Dad had the job of driving all of our gear up here, so again, a huge thanks to them also, as it would be petty hard to win an event without our Korn Racing, Jettco powered Hyper.”

So as the dust settles on a lengthy season for Charlie Brown, he now focuses on a new challenge, one that takes him half way around the world to compete in the Pennsylvania Micro Speedweek, commencing June 30th.

Charlie Brown Racing,
Proudly supported by:
Korn Racing,
Aussie Trackwear,
APS- Australian Paving Services,
Send With Us,
Hyper Racing.