Before filming had even begun the drama started. In final testing, Sean put his '85 Brock Commodore on the Dyno and after putting out 1,000 rwhp the driveshaft snapped and ended up coming through the floor in the passenger seat. The gearbox was also gone.

While anyone else would have simply thrown in the towel, Sean made it clear to the producers that there was no need to call up the reserve competitor as he had come this far and he would be there by the time the cameras started rolling.

After three days of driving around the country to pick up the required parts, no sleep and a lot of help from friends, Sean was ready to go...almost. After locating a replacement rear axle, it was cruelly delayed by the couriers when it somehow got "lost". Sean quickly borrowed a spare axle and welded it in so at least the car could drive.

After arriving on time, as he promised, it was a nervous wait for Sean to see if the new axle would arrive before the first challenge.

It didn’t.........

As the guys headed out to Winton Raceway for the first challenge there was a general feeling of excitement and a lot of nerves – there was a lot riding on this; the big cars didn’t want to be shown up by the little turbos and 4 cylinder cars wanted to show up the big blocks.

The first challenge was to establish the pecking order for the rest of series. It also established George as the biggest personality in the group – there was never more than 5 minutes where George’s voice wasn’t heard , and it generally following the camera crew!

The challenge itself was fairly uneventful – Luffy put all the cars through their paces and scored the guys on a number of criteria:

Acceleration
• Braking
• Handling / Controllability
• Lap time

The scoring was pretty even while some cars had a lot of power that saw them achieve good points for acceleration, they fell short on handling and controllability. And the smaller cars that lacked the raw power tended to score well on braking and handling.

Incredibly Sean’s Brock Commodore held up and completed the challenge however he lost big points for handling and braking.

Ultimately it was Shane’s Nissan 180SX that took maximum points and Darryl’s Subaru WRX came in 2nd – it did however put in the fastest lap time.

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

With the first challenge out of the way there was a definite sense of relief amongst the competitors. It was now time for the competitors to get behind the wheel.

Sean’s new axle was due to arrive today but as all the competitors left the BS&G garage, it was nowhere to be seen – Sean’s just hoping the welded axle would hold up for this challenge as well.

Here we introduced the guys to Chrysler Test Car – the 300C SRT8 which Luffy would be driving to provide the benchmark time and score.

After setting a very respectable time of 13.58 the guys were then shown how the pros did it. Elvis Barbieri and his drag car Ford Capri GT blistered down the runway to set a time of 10.09.

With the benchmarks set it was now time for the competitors to head onto the runway.

While seemingly an easy challenge – it proved more difficult as the pressure took its toll. A lot of the guys had trouble getting off the line cleanly without getting too much wheel spin and poor old Brendan couldn’t even get if off the line at all in the first run as he stalled his Monaro (the triple plate clutch was proving Brendan’s downfall early).

Sean was very nervous about how the welded axle would hold up and his nerves were well founded as the rear axle snapped as he pushed off the line in the first run. He did however have the presence of mind to actually pass the finish line so that at the very least he would receive some points instead of 0 for not finishing.

While Sash was the clear frontrunner after the first run he blew a welsh plug as he crossed the finished line spewing coolant all over the track.

This proved fortunate for Sash as while he was racing to fix the car in time for a second run, the track needed to be cleared completely to ensure safety for all competitors.

Once the track was cleared it was time for the second run. Most of the competitors had a much better run and posted some solid times.

Sash literally made it with seconds to spare – driving straight onto the start line he set an even quicker time to take the win.

After car council the boys headed out for a couple of beers while Sean was under the car making sure nothing else was damaged.

Still no sign of his new axle…..

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

Day three and the competitors were excited – they got to leave their pride and joy in the garage as we headed to the DECA skidpan for advanced driver challenge where they got to thrash about in the Chrysler 300 SRT8’s.

And with some torrential rain overnight making the skidpan more like an ice rink the competitors’ driving skills were certainly going to be put to the test.

After Luffy took all the competitors around the course to give them advice on how to handle the conditions, and the big Chrysler, it was over to boys to give it a run on their own.

Slippery was the word of the day with most competitors struggling to keep the Test Car in a straight line let alone posting a good time. No-one came close to beating Luffy’s time of 33.00 in the first run.

It was particularly difficult for our NZ competitor, Darryl – also the shortest man in the competition. But with the addition of a couple of phone books on the drivers seat Darryl was pretty confident of a competitive second run.

By the end of first run our resident funny man, George got a little agitated at his inability to handle the course and took his frustrations out on the Chrysler – the power steering pump came off second best. Fortunately, Chrysler was good enough to give us 2 cars and so the replacement was brought in.

The second run was a much better performance by all involved and with the track starting to dry up a little bit the times started coming down. Sash was the eventual winner with a time of 33.95 – less than a second away from Luffy’s time which was rather impressive.

After the competitors had completed the challenge, it was time for the Turtle Wax guys to try their hand – let’s just say that its better they stick to making great car care products as they certainly won’t make a career out of driving.

Upon arrival back to the garage, a very relieved Sean found that his new axle had arrived – his confidence increased immediately and he was excited to get stuck in and get back into the competition.

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

After working through the night, Sean had the new axle in place and was ready to hit the Skidpan in the Versatility challenge.

With the competition now nearing the half-way mark and the leader board taking shape, there was mounting pressure on the competitors to hold their position in the top half or work their way up in the case of the bottom four!

The first part of the challenge was the Super Slalom course. Designed to test the car’s throttle response and manoeuvrability the course was a series of cones that our competitors had to navigate in the correct order around before finishing in the garage. Hitting a cone or missing one completely would result in a DQ for that run.

The course was set to test the driving abilities and nerves of our competitors – the big block engines were going to have to keep their right foot steady so as to not get big oversteer while the smaller 4 cylinder cars had to contend with understeer. It was going to interesting.

Each competitor was given 2 runs at the course – while some made use of the first run to finetune their skills on the course, many used the opportunity to play up in front of the crowd at Springnats and put on a show!

When the showing off had ended, they quickly realised this challenge wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.

The results were surprising, Shane’s Laser dominated the course with the little front wheel drive car while Brendan was able to handle that triple plate clutch to perfection finishing in second. Sash came crashing back to earth after his two victories in a row by finishing with the slowest time over the Super Slalom course.

The best news of the morning was not in the results but the fact that Mr HDT held up, even after a good thrashing so Sean was feeling a lot more comfortable.

Onto the go-to-whoa...

While last year in series 1 this pretty simple challenge created the biggest drama after Dom’s RX7 crossed the beam that essentially saw him lose the competition – there was not quite as much drama this time round.

While a couple of the boys received a DQ on certain runs for failing to stop inside the garage, everyone at least posted a time.

Sash made amends after his poor run in the Super Slalom by finishing second in the go-to-whoa. And as he so eloquently stated... ”Anytime you land in the box it’s pretty good!”

But this section belonged to Darryl and his WRX – after heading straight through the back of the garage in his first run, he followed it up with a lightning fast run that saw him stop with literally millimetres to spare.

During final car council all the combined scores were tallied to provide us with our top two – Darryl and Shane K, the winners of the respective challenge sections. And it was bitter sweet for Shane K – after getting onto the podium to be in the top 2, Shane missed out by 0.23 seconds.

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

The Show N Shine challenge was going to be one of the closest challenges in the entire series – there was a group of cars that had the ability to take out the win.

Coming into the series, Brendan and Darryl saw this as their weakest challenge – essentially built as hardcore track cars they didn’t have the finish that many of the other competitors had.

Each competitor was given a couple of minutes with our judges to run through all the details of their car and why it made them so special. The guys were then given a couple of hours to prep and set their cars up before final judging.

We also brought in some Show N Shine experts – Turtle Wax ambassadors, Mal Parkinson and Con Kouvela – to help the guys out with some last minute tips and tricks to impress the judges and gain valuable points.

As the guys scrambled to complete their set-ups it was clear 2 competitors were definitely out for the win. Both Shane’s had to prepare elaborate displays; Shane Kennett completed his set-up with a smoke machine.

As time ran out – everyone was asked to leave the warehouse so our judges could inspect and give their final results.

It was a very close competition with Shane S, George, Sean, Murray, Shane K all in contention to finish on the podium.

Ultimately it was Shane S and Sean who faced off on the podium in final car council with Sean taking the win and maximum points. This was a must win challenge for Sean after such a poor start to the competition – and it was also a confidence booster going into his strongest challenge – the Dyno!

...there would be more than a few nerves for Sean whose last time on the Dyno resulted in him looking at the broken driveshaft as it poked through the floor!

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

Time for the Dyno challenge...

As the competitors headed to Springnats early on Sunday morning there was a little hesitation with some of the competitors – we’re getting down to the business end of the competition and the last thing anyone needed was to have their engine blow up on the Dyno.

This was a challenge that always favoured the big block V8’s – and given that Sean had previously pushed out over 1,000 hp at the driven wheels he was going to be hard to beat.

And the results were expected – the 4 cylinder cars just couldn’t put out the power as they finished 6th, 7th, and 8th.

At the top of the field were the old school muscle cars of Sean and Sash while Brendan and George came through in 3rd and 4th.

While most of the competitors saw their power output down from the own experience, it was the same for everyone so no-one was disadvantaged.

The good news was that everyone’s engine held up with no issues......... or so we thought!

On his way back to the BS&G warehouse George heard a disturbing noise coming from the engine. Upon turning into the BS&G warehouse, his engine completely seized.

After much discussion and swearing amongst the competitors, it was determined that the issue was the flex plate. While George was shattered that this would ruin his chances of taking out the title coming into the final challenge, the other guys were more optimistic.

That night George and some of the boys headed down to Jarrod Mackin’s workshop to get a good assessment of the situation. Fortunately for George the flex plate was not damaged – the bolts had come loose causing the rattling. After a lot of Locktight the guys pieced it back together and a relieved George was still in the competition with a fighting chance.

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.

The final challenge for this year’s Blood Sweat & Gears series came down to the wire. You couldn’t have asked for a closer competition. With 4 competitors all within range of taking out the title the pressure was well and truly on...

But because we don’t want to spoil the last episode, you just going to have to tune in next Monday night for the finale where all will be revealed – the results will be a little surprising...

Click here to see the full challenge scorecard.