Today was the day that practice sessions were held for the weekend’s round of action at The Bend.

News of Jack Perkins arrival in Stock Cars Australia was reported by V8 Sleuth and Speedcafe.

Hopefully it will inspire other drivers to want to have a go at racing in SCA, it doesn’t matter if the driver is known or unknown to the masses, as long as they can safely drive and of course have the money to own or be leased a car, they’ll have a category to call home.

As it is Friday, there is no timing on Natsoft, so we don’t usually know what is going on during the day until later, however we have seen videos from the 22 AUSCAR team Instagram account so they are there and in action.

Unfortunately, the round is not being streamed, it was thought it would be but the VMRC streaming deal with Blend Line TV is for Victorian rounds only which does suck for all competitors as there is a record field of X1’s over there.

It is not all bad news as Roy Ellery is over there and so we will get footage to look at after the round is completed.

The early part of this week was spent helping Jamie Jordan tell what became the story of the 1998/99 AUSCAR and Sportsman Non-Championship round at Calder Park Raceway.

It is always amazing how easy curiosity can be driven by something like one photograph.

One photograph grabbed from who knows where showing thirteen cars (only ten got a mention in Auto Action) that’s all we had to go with but thanks to an archived Calder Park website and V8 Sleuth who provided the Auto Action magazine article, we got the story told.

Some friends of ours may be enjoying a NASCAR page on Facebook that is titled Cathy Taughinbaugh but the reality is that is a page full of ripped off material, the original stuff is in the Instagram account nascarrumornostalgia.

When you think about it, most Facebook pages are ones that solely rips off material, one example is classic Hollywood actors and actresses, pages have sprung up about them and in the last line of a post there is a Happy Birthday message when it is nowhere near their birthday so that’s a big indicator that someone or something copies a post lock, stock and barrel.

Parts have continued to arrive for Eddie’s Oldsmobile; everybody needs a good muffler system these days, George Elliot’s #55 Lumina once had problems with environmental authorities as four mufflers weren’t good enough for their sound lowering requirements.

Most Wanted

We are looking for anybody who may know this ex-Brad Jones, ex-Kim Jane ride car and can prove where the car came from before Brad Jones, we have two different opinions, one is that it came from George Elliot (he isn’t sure about that) and the other is it came from Walter Giles (Giles family doesn’t believe that).

The right side 3/4 window is considered key, it looks very similar to the right 3/4 window of the Ron Goodman #05 Oldsmobile at the Gold Coast in 1992 as it doesn’t look very Oldsmobile like, but we have found no similar and clear photo of the #05 Oldsmobile’s right side to accurately compare the two.

Somebody out there has to know for sure, Brad Jones getting a ride car had to be a pretty big deal as he only had ‘Elroy’ on hand early on, plus a ride car is a nice way to get more Stock Car laps in too.

We’re hoping that somebody has an article from 1992 that mentions Ian Thomas buying an Oldsmobile or getting one built, this car is the one used in the 1992/93 season before moved on to John Faulkner, Eddie Abelnica and Paul Stocker who had Doug Moss driving it.

Why we are asking is because Doug Taylor is sure he only reconditioned the car, Peter Sportelli says Doug built the car, Ian Thomas thinks it came from Morgan-McClure like the previous two Olds and John Faulkner believed it came from TriStar when they were offloading their cars to go to Chevrolet and then Ford.

So hopefully somebody has something written down that can answer which story is the correct one.

That wraps up this eighty-fifth edition of Aussie Stock Car News, a pretty good and interesting week all things considered.

See you next week.