With his car off the road for several months, Andy Harris stepped into an unfamiliar car and did the unthinkable.
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Harris participated in the Sydney 300 at the Sydney Motorway at Eastern Creek with co-driver, Todd Herring and pulled out a victory.
Besides only jumping in the car for the first time, he had only known his co-driver for a few minutes.
"He's (Todd) a really great bloke," Harris said.
"I didn't know him that well and we hadn't even spoke for more than five minutes before that weekend, but he made the drive really easy.
"He kept telling me to drive the car as hard as possible and to treat it like your own. I felt really comfortable racing with him.
"Friday morning I had a couple of sessions but I was definitely rusty.
"I then had a couple of solid sessions in the car and got back into the rhythm of it all. It's like riding a bike, once you're back on it, you soon get the hang of it again."
Starting from second on the grid, Harris felt pretty confident, heading into the race, that they could take first position.
"I knew we'd be towards the pointy end of the grid but not outright first or second," Harris said.
"I thought that if we kept our noses clean and out of trouble during the race we'd have a pretty good chance to finish at the front.
"The big thing in a race like that is reliability because of how long it goes for. A lot of the cars don't last, especially like the high powered car I was driving. Temperatures continue to rise over the race which can make things quite difficult.
"We had a water system that would spray the inter-cooler and radiator to keep things cool. There was a lot of prep done to the car for the race."
It's the biggest race that I compete in, I've done five now, so it's the highest level that I race in. So to win one is pretty cool.
- Andy Harris
Harris started the first leg and completed 37 laps before handing the wheel over to Herring. But getting back behind the wheel wasn't a breeze.
"It was really hot," Harris said.
"I could tell pretty quickly my racing fitness wasn't where it needed to be, so it was pretty hard work.
"Our tyres went off pretty badly. That was a real handful, we had to really work for it.
"Conserving them for the rest of the race was difficult. I started to feel them go 20 laps in. I just kept it as straight as I could and drove to the best of my abilities."
He's been around the track many times but never got the top spot. This time around Harris has made some lifelong memories and got the proverbial monkey off his back.
"Obviously winning was the highlight (laughs)," Harris said.
"It was good fun. Although I hadn't raced for a while and I did feel my fitness wasn't the best, it was really great just to be back in a car, racing.
"It's the biggest race that I compete in, I've done five now. It's the highest level that I race in, so to win one is pretty cool.
"This definitely ranks as my top racing accomplishment."
