Even with the Bakers Blitz/Southern 80 double and a race record a year ago, TR's victory in Saturday's Bakers Blitz came with everything stacked against them.
Having had to fight for Kevin Boylan to replace Nathan Miller as observer and an incident on Friday morning while training, TR's 6.39:34 was five seconds faster than last year.
Driver Ian Tricker was almost in disbelief when he got to the river bank.
“It's tremendous,” he said.
“I can't even begin to tell you what this past week has been like. After Friday, on the back of everything else, we had our concerns. But we pushed through it and had a great race.”
By Tricker's own admission, TR was far from at its best when it hit the water.
“The boat's ugly,” he said.
“I have a lot of work to do in order to get it on the water for the 80 itself. But it goes to show what we can do on an ugly day, so if we can get it right, we can do a lot of good things.”
Tricker said his team members gave their all in trying to put down the best time they possibly could.
“We just tried to be smooth,” he said.
“It was hard though. We tried something, it didn't work and we couldn't change it mid race. But we're here, we have a shot to do something on Sunday.”
Even after bettering last year's qualifying time, Tricker was in no mood to talk about the record.
“I'm not even thinking about it,” he said.
“We will try and do our best, we will assess the competition, won't take any risks and will do everything we can to win.”
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