BRAYDEN Cooley is turning the Victorian sprintcar season's delayed start into a positive.
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The Kirkstall-based racer is busy working on a second car, waiting for a truck to arrive from Sydney, when the New South Wales border re-opens, and adding to his spare parts.
Cooley, 21, praised Allansford's Premier Speedway for cancelling its three pre-Christmas meetings due to coronavirus crowd limitations.
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He will keep busy in his south-west shed, fine-tuning ahead of races in 2021.
"We're not going to do any practice days, we're going to wait it out," he said.
"We are building a new car at the moment so we have two and we're keeping an eye on the cases in Victoria, hopefully they open the borders up soon."
Cooley said preparation was key for a young racing team finding its way in the speedway world.
"We're just trying to stock up on spare parts and we're trying to get a spare engine as well which we're not too far away with," he said.
"It's a guessing game at the moment, trying to figure out what the season looks like but I think it will be a bit of picking and choosing in 2021. We're not going to run the car until next year."
Cooley competed in the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic in January.
He loved the experience despite it proving a costly exercise.
"Raced in the classic just gone, we ended up doing the motor when we crossed the line when we'd won the heat race," Cooley said.
"The bill wasn't very nice."
But he now feels better prepared for what lies ahead in an uncompromising sport.
"We've got some parts from America which should be here in a month's time, we should be raring to go in a month," he said.
"We were thinking about going to Murray Bridge (in South Australia to race) if we can but we have to wait and see what happens (with border restrictions).
"We obviously want to support Premier Speedway as much as we can as it's our home track.
"Hopefully it's good news in 2021."