Ingall's chassis rebuild on-track for Sydney

Repair Management Australia Racing has continued to restore chassis 888-035, damaged at the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 last month, with the goal of running the Commodore at the December 5-7 Sydney finale.

With less than a fortnight between Bathurst and the Castrol EDGE Gold Coast 600, the team leased ex-GRM chassis VF15 from Dragon Motor Racing and achieved two top 10 results on the streets of Surfers Paradise.

Since the last event, Lucas Dumbrell Motorsporthas continued to convert the borrowed chassis towards the team's usual specifications, ahead of the Phillip Island event, while Ingall's original chassis has been repaired at Jimmy's Fab Shop in Castlemaine.

Team Principal Lucas Dumbrell expects the empty shell to be rebuilt in the next fortnight using a combination of new parts and existing spares.

"We would have preferred to use our main car for Phillip Island but given the extent of repairs required it wasn't possible," he said.

"There is a substantial amount of work involved in building these cars, James and his staff have done a fantastic job repairing the chassis."

As reported earlier, the best option for the team was to continue running the ex-GRM car for Phillip Island.

"The car from Dragon (Motor Racing) ran without a mechanical fault on the Gold Coast and delivered two solid results so we will continue to use that next weekend," Dumbrell said.

"We had a car ready so there was no need to rush to rebuild our regular chassis although our goal is to have it ready for the last round in Sydney."

A substantial amount of work has been required to get chassis 888-035 to where it is now -while an exact figure has not been calculated, the team estimates crash damage at over $150,000.

All sheet metal and tubing had been removed, including the A-pillar and firewall, for repairs.

James White, owner and metal fabricator at Jimmy's Fab Shop, said the restoration had gone to schedule and the chassis is now back at the team's Nunawading workshop.

"Realistically the repair was ok, it was fairly routine and there were just a couple of things that caught us out that we didn't know about," he said.

"As we cut pieces apart we would find further damage but it's on the table so you fix it, it's only harder to fix later on.

"There was extensive damage in the front end of the car, with the front right corner sustaining major damage back through to the firewall. This required all the tubing and most of the sheet metal to be replaced."

Secondary impact included damage to the transaxle mounts and also the left-hand side of the car.

"It's been a big week; without FlexiCut Engineering, Online Laser, Nathan and Andro working with me, we wouldn't have it done," White said.

James and his team worked over three hundred hours to mend the broken shell; it now makes a last stop at Repair Management Australia for paint.

The penultimate round of the 2014 V8 Supercar Championship runs November 14-16 - tickets are still available now.