CICA Community Engagement Community engagement activities by a CICA member

LIFE IN THE FAST CRANE

As part of a community engagement and awareness campaign as well as a celebration of the National Championship, Cosmo Cranes took a Toyota 86 race car to a local shopping centre and hoisted it 30 metres into the air.

TIM BROOK is from Oran Park in Sydney’s west runs Tim Brook Motorsport. Tim started racing Go-Karts at the age of 11 and has been racing for 21 years He moved from Go-Karts to Formula Vee, where he won State and National Titles and then progressed to the Toyota 86 Racing Series in 2016.

“This will be my 4th season of racing in the Toyota 86 category and I was lucky enough to win the National Championship last season”, he said.

The Toyota 86 category is backed and sponsored by Toyota and the drivers all race Toyota 86’s.

“It’s classified as a ‘one-make series with each car the same. Control components are identical which means they control suspension components, brakes, wheels, tyres, exhaust, MoTec ECU and data logger etc,” said Brook.

“With each car the same, every driver is competing on a level playing field and what differentiates us, is the performance of the driver-we are all trying to extract as much out of the car as we possibly can.”

According to Brook, the series is heavily scrutinised for eligibility to ensure each team is working within the guidelines and to the rulebook.

“Essentially, the category is sold and marketed as a pro-am series attracting professional and amateur drivers,” he said.

“The professional drivers are invited by Toyota to compete and some big names who have competed in the category include Glenn Seton, Steven Johnson, Luke Youlden (who won the Bathurst 1000 with David Reynolds recently), and Garth Tander and his wife Leanne who competed at Phillip Island,” he said.

Toyota provide vehicles for the invited drivers and there are only two invited drivers competing in each event.

“At Phillip Island we had 40, so the other 38 are ran at an amateur level. There are a lot of guys like me, who run their team from their garage at home, but there are a couple of bigger teams that run up to six cars,” said Brook.

Last season, there were six events for the category and there will be five this season.

“Every race supports the V8 Supercar Championship, so we get great television coverage both on Foxtel and Channel 10. This year, we’ll be competing in Victoria twice, NSW twice, and one meet will be in Queensland. We won the championship last season, so we’ll have the number one on the car and every team will be gunning for me,” said Brook.

The Cosmo Crane partnership started back in 2017 when Brook was driving a car for the Muller brothers from Ultimate Karting in Sydney.

“For the 2018 season, myself and the team from McLaren Real Estate Macarthur approached Josh and John Handley from Cosmo Cranes, told them my plans to change my road car into a race car and asked them if they’d like to help out and sponsor me. They did and they’re supporting me again this season in the same capacity.”

To celebrate the championship and being Western Sydney boys, Brook and the Cosmo Cranes team decided to display the car, over a December weekend, at Narellan Town Centre. The only difference being the car was hoisted 30m off the ground.

“The feedback from the public was really interesting. Most hadn’t been that close up and personal to a crane before and they were excited to see the car hoisted up there,” said Brook.

“Some were concerned about the safety of the display unaware of the processes and detailed planning that goes into an

The car was hoisted 30 metres off the ground.

exercise like that. There were a couple of guys dedicated to that crane over both days to ensure everything went smoothly. For me, it was a bit nerve wracking seeing the car that far above the ground and waiting for it to come back down to earth nice and gently. In fact, the wind strengthened on both afternoons so we brought the car down earlier, for safety reasons,” he said.

“We got lots of positive feedback and we certainly achieved our objectives. Obviously, we wanted to get the branding out-there but the Cosmo Cranes team also wanted to engage the local community and help them understand a bit more about the cranes and what they do.

“People are still talking about it. We recently had the car on display at the Camden Show, which is a large show in western Sydney, and it’s just down the road from where we had the crane. People were coming up and asking if that was the car hoisted up by the crane? The whole exercise worked really well,” said Brook. It was great exposure and acknowledgement for the whole team,” said Brook.

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