15th September 2008:

Petzold the Master of Monza...

Last season Heinz Petzold drove out of his skin at Monza/Brianza in the Formula 1 race to bring home a historic victory for himself and his team, and yesterday he only went and did it again! It's another fantastic result to go with Justin's early season win at Sepang.
Heinz qualified well for 2nd on the grid and only missed out on pole by 0.2 seconds but it was enough to smash the team record for the track. It was almost the perfect start to the 200th race of Heinz' illustrious career. It was a tough, long battle to take the win, David Fish started from pole and led the first half of the race and made it very difficult for Heinz to pass. After the first pit stops Heinz upped the pressure on David and eventually made a very nice move for the lead, David got loose as Heinz passed and never had another chance to come back, Heinz was gone and wasn't looking back.

The team management were obviously ecstatic with the win and the benefits were made clear immediately when APR HQ received a call from representatives of the Heinz Food Company expressing an interest in becoming team sponsors. The press coverage of the Monza win was huge and Heinz obviously want a piece of that. So it's very likely that Heinz Petzold will be sporting new colours next season in whatever series he ends up racing, and will really be making a name for himself.

10th September 2008:

APR take the inaugural World Rally title...

Darren and Carl Adams knew they had the team title wrapped up going into the final round in Australia, some dominant performances in previous rounds had given them an unassailable lead. The driver's championship, however, was still up for grabs, Darren and Carl were dead level before Australia. Both drivers put in solid performances and finished 1st and 2nd for the 5th time over the 6 rounds. APR's dirt ranking soared to 9.543, we really couldn't have hoped for more. So with the team title sewn up both drivers were free to attack and go for the driver's title.
Carl blazed through the stages with his usual all-out style and set a fantastic record on the infamous Mineshaft stage. However, a small mistake on the East West stage was quite costly and gave Darren some breathing space. So Darren faced the prospect of having to complete Mineshaft within 30 seconds of Carl's time to take the title. He overcame the nerves and just drove at a sensible pace and finished 16 seconds slower than Carl to take the Australian Rally by 14 seconds. Darren was over the moon and paid tribute to his brother's fantastic season by asking him to collect the team trophy from Mr. McArthur.
Carl said he had really enjoyed the hard battle over the series and would be back challenging even harder next season, that bodes well for the team, the other teams have some serious work to do in the off-season if they plan to challenge the mighty APR in the future.

Highlights from first half of Series 9 at Race2Play; Rally, F1 and some other stuff........ audio gets a bit nasty in the middle, haven't figured out how to avoid that in the Flash conversion yet.

20th July 2008:

Justin Rebelo wins at Sepang; S9 starts with a bang.....

Formula 1, Series 9, Round 2; After a solid 4th & 5th in the first round at Silverstone, APR were looking good in the championship standings. We moved on to Sepang, Malaysia for the 2nd round, a new track for both cars and drivers. Justin and Heinz liked the look and feel of the new S9 cars and soon found their groove out on the track, they put down some very good times in pre-practice and even made the big boys of VindexWorks and GTNDC sit up and take notice.
In qualifying it seemed that Justin had done enough for pole with a lap record but in the final seconds David Fisher pipped him by 0.006 seconds and took the pole and the lap record. 2nd was still better than we would have hoped for pre-race and with Heinz in 4th it was looking like we could have 2 cars in the points as long as we avoided problems in the race. Justin maintained 2nd throughout the first stint and pounced on Fisher for the lead before the first stops, not an easy pass by any means, Fisher fought hard to hold the lead and there was some very close side-by-side action. Justin kept his head and kept the lead for the rest of the race, bringing home APR's 2nd Formula 1 win and their 1st this season. The team are very happy to see that we are now only 1 point behind VindexWorks in the Team Championship. The sponsors could not be more pleased with the new signings, both of whom have already won for the team in only their first weeks as APR drivers.

After a pretty exhausting day of Rally on the Saturday, Darren joined Heinz Petzold at Hidden Valley in Australia on the Sunday. The 2 Predator drivers qualified 2nd and 3rd and went on to take another impressive 1,2 finish with Darren taking the victory. Not only was this a very nice race result, but it also gave the team a substantial lead going into the second half of the season.

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Then, after a very short celebration in Australia, it was off to Monza for the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix. This is the ultimate challenge, the podium is regularly locked up by the 3 Alien drivers, McArthur, Bayless and Fisher and a 4th place is almost equal to a win for the human participants. The Predators did well in qualifying with 4th and 5th on the grid, right behind the afore-mentioned Aliens. The race provided plenty of drama right from the start, Fisher and McArthur both suffering problems and dropping back. This left Heinz to take the lead after 6 laps and he held on to it stubbornly under challenges from Bayless and Scott Michaels. Darren meanwhile had his own dramas and lost places at the start which had to be earned back, but by the 2nd half of the race he was looking strong in 4th behind Michaels, Bayless and Heinz. Then more drama, Bayless hit the pit wall and was out, then on the final lap Michaels' engine blew and Heinz took the lead again. He really couldn't believe his luck and when Darren followed him home in 2nd it topped off an extraordinary weekend for APR. This was Heinz' first win in F1 and his first for APR, and it was the first time a team has scored a 1,2 finish in F1... ever.

Needless to say, all 3 drivers were very tired after such a busy and successful weekend, so they went home to bed for an early night and certainly weren't anywhere near Leicester Square when someone painted the lions red and yellow, and green and black before screaming off in a blue Subaru Impreza at "dangerous" speeds.