THE INKY VALVE

"People have been breaking his balls about this Inky Valve (fuel control system). I don't know what people's perception is. Whether they think I've bought this Inky Valve and I've got the rights to it. I've got the rights to jack shit! It's just the guy's loyalty, and anyone who knows Ian will tell you, he's just like that. He can go and sell this valve and make a lot of money, but he's not interested. He says to me, 'When you retire, I retire.'

"The other day we had a heart-to-heart and again I said to him, 'While it's hot, why don't you market these things?' He said, 'I've been with you for 11 years Peter, that counts for something. For the last 11 years we've had fun, we've gone racing, I'm not going to turn my back on that now.' "

In fact there's an interview with Kapiris and Cleland on the net in which Cleland states there are some things worth more than money. Kapiris showed loyalty to him when everyone thought he wasn't delivering for him and now he figures it's time to repay.

"It's a friendship that's lasted 11 years. It's very hard, I'll go out and torch an engine. I won't go back and say, 'Ian you screwed up! Like when I do something wrong, he doesn't say, well you screwed up.' It's just racing, we're not curing cancer.

"When we built the Studebaker, I said to Ian, 'I want to run a 5.9,' and he laughed, and after a year of racing I said, 'Mate, we're never going to go there.' And now, we're knocking on the door.

"I said to Ian recently, 'Where do we go if we run a 5.9, now that it's closer to reality?' And he said, 'We'll just have to win everything.' Tony Heasly, one of the guys on the crew, made up T-shirts when we first built the Studebaker three years ago that say, 'First car to run a 5.9'. I had said to him, 'Tony just hide those T-shirts, don't show anybody.' "

So what would they rather do, run a five or win the Top Doorslammer championship?

"We've got to calm down. We've got to sit back and get a hold of everything. At the end of the day winning the championship is probably number one, but then you look at people like Allan Dobson. What's he famous for? Being the first to run a 5.9 in an alcohol car (in Australia). If the opportunity is there and the window is there, you've got to take it. But, the objective is, we go to a meeting and say, let's go for the championship. But when you get there, mate, it's a different story. We are just racers at heart.

"There are racers out there who may have a solo and will take it easy. Ian will come up to me and say, 'Well, you've got a solo but I know what you're going to do, so there's no good telling you to take it easy.' We like going fast, mate."

So why was it so hard to get a handle on the PSI?

"With the PSI, you've got a window when you can run really fast with the way we were running. You pull one out of the bag and then the next three meetings you shake the car. You can make too much horsepower - and that's what we were doing. The fuel curve on the PSI is really radical. That's what this Inky Valve has done, it's just calmed the fuel curve.

THERE'S A CLUTCH, TOO

"You tyre shake, your rpm goes up. When your rpm goes up on a PSI, it increases horsepower, so it's like double jeopardy. Whereas Ian's fuel control calms it all down. And the clutch. Everyone talks about this Inky Valve but fails to mention the clutch Ian designed.

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