Once a year, Circuit Excel competitors from across Australia come together for one of the biggest events on the category's calendar: the Circuit Excel Nationals. While each state runs its own championship, the Nationals bring drivers from around the country together to compete on the same circuit and see how they measure up against Australia's best. After being hosted at Phillip Island in 2025, the event is heading to our home circuit, The Bend Motorsport Park, for 2026. For Quinn Racing, it's an exciting opportunity to compete on familiar territory against some of the most talented drivers in Australian grassroots motorsport. With the event fast approaching, we headed to The Bend for a dedicated test day to work through a few outstanding issues with our Hyundai Excel race car. There were some important changes we wanted to make before Nationals, but what started as a straightforward preparation day ended up revealing a problem we'd unknowingly been battling all season.
One of the first things we needed to address was Cameron's seating position. Being relatively tall, fitting comfortably inside a compact Hyundai Excel race car isn't particularly easy, and our previous seating arrangement had left us sitting much too high in the cockpit. Not only was this uncomfortable, with cramped legs and an awkward driving position, but it also presented some safety concerns. With the helmet sitting uncomfortably close to the roll cage and roof, lowering the seating position became a priority. There are also potential performance benefits from positioning the driver's weight lower in the car. Thankfully, the crew at Excel Garage helped make the necessary modifications, getting Cameron sitting considerably lower and more comfortably. However, changing the seating position had a surprisingly significant effect on how the car felt to drive. Everything from pedal operation and steering wheel positioning to visibility through corners had changed slightly. Even familiar braking markers and apexes looked different from the new perspective. With a substantial gap since our previous race meeting, the opening sessions were spent getting reacquainted with the car and adjusting to the new driving position.
The second issue we needed to resolve was considerably more complicated. During Round 1 of the championship, our improved pace had placed us comfortably within the category's 103% performance threshold. Under the regulations explained to us, cars meeting this threshold become subject to additional technical scrutiny, including detailed inspections of components such as engine seals, gearbox seals and suspension tamper seals. Unfortunately, during inspection, it was discovered that our shock absorbers were missing their required sealing tags. It appeared that a previous owner had experienced problems with the shock absorber top mounts coming loose and had removed the seals to gain access for tightening. While the modification wasn't necessarily malicious, the missing seals meant there was no longer a way to verify that the control suspension components hadn't been modified. Thankfully, we received a warning rather than a penalty, but the issue needed to be resolved before Nationals. With national-level technical inspections potentially being far more stringent, arriving with questionable suspension compliance was not an option. The shocks would need to be removed and sent away for inspection.
Our shock absorbers were sent to SuperShock, the supplier of the category's control suspension package, for inspection and dynamometer testing. The purpose was to verify their performance against the official control specifications and ensure they were suitable for competition. What we discovered was rather frustrating. The shocks hadn't been serviced or checked since they were originally built in 2022, and the front dampers were performing well below their intended specifications. According to SuperShock, they were particularly soft in rebound damping. Suddenly, one of the biggest handling problems we'd been battling throughout the season started to make sense. We'd been struggling with persistent understeer, constantly searching for ways to improve the car's front-end response and get it turning into corners more effectively. Comparing onboard footage with other Excel Garage cars had only made the issue more frustrating, as their cars appeared to respond far more sharply than ours. As it turned out, the problem wasn't necessarily our driving or suspension adjustments. The shock absorbers themselves weren't performing as intended! With the dampers rebuilt and returned by SuperShock, we finally had an opportunity to discover just how much difference properly functioning suspension could make.
With the refreshed shocks installed and our seating position adjusted, it was time to get back on track and evaluate the changes. The difference in the car's handling was immediately noticeable. The front end finally responded properly to steering inputs, providing the sharper turn-in and cornering response we'd been searching for throughout the season. After spending so much time trying to compensate for the car's understeer through setup changes and driving technique, it was encouraging to discover that we hadn't simply been imagining the problem. Having properly functioning dampers gave us a much better foundation to work from, and the car finally felt closer to what we'd expected from the control suspension package. Combined with the improved seating position, the changes made for a much more positive driving experience, although there was still some adjustment required to become completely comfortable with the revised cockpit layout. By the end of the test day, we'd made some valuable progress and were feeling considerably more confident about our preparations for Nationals.
Preparing for a major motorsport event isn't always about finding more horsepower or making dramatic performance upgrades. Sometimes, the biggest improvements come from identifying and correcting problems that have been holding you back without you even realising.
Our preparations for the 2026 Circuit Excel Nationals highlighted exactly that. What began as a relatively straightforward test day turned into an important opportunity to improve driver comfort, address technical compliance concerns and uncover a significant suspension issue.
A massive thank you to Excel Garage for their continued work preparing the car, and to SuperShock for their incredibly quick turnaround inspecting and rebuilding our dampers. Their efforts have put us in a much stronger position heading into one of the biggest race meetings of the year.
With the Nationals being held on home turf at The Bend Motorsport Park, we're incredibly excited to line up alongside some of the best Circuit Excel drivers from across Australia. We know the competition will be fierce, but after the improvements made during testing, we're feeling more confident about what we can achieve.
The car is feeling better than ever, and we can't wait to see how we stack up against the rest of the country!
