Postby Lokiel » Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:13 am
This was a great opportunity to do some good and have fun doing it. Having never been on a track before, I'd been apprehensive about going on club track days without any track training so this was the perfect way for me to experience a race track and get some driving experience without it being too serious.
I thought it would be a nice touch to hand out some Queensland MX-5 Car Club baseball caps to the kids that we took around the track so they could take away a momento from the day and arranged with Brenda from the QLD MX5 Car Club to buy some. Brenda and Phillip dropped them around on the Friday night before the event and told me that I'd "cleaned them out" caps so I'd like to apologise to those people looking for one in the short term, you will just have to wait until more stock arrives, sorry.
The day started out pretty ordinary, in fact it drizzled with rain the whole way there and the outlook really didn't look much better. There were a few MX5s going along on the day and we arranged to meet up at the Purga Mobil petrol station at 8:30am. Surprisingly we all turned up on time and I distributed the caps amongst the drivers.
I've never seen so many Ferraris in my life! There were 72 cars driving the track on the day and most seemed to be Ferraris. Apart from the Ferraris there were 5(or 6) MX-5s, a Ford GT (best looking car there in my opinion), a couple of Porsches (one a dedicated race car), a Camaro, Laborghini, Maserati, Mitsubishi EVO, Nissan Skyline (fastest car on the track), Audi TT, Honda S2000, Twin-turbo RX-7, Porsche 4WD, Monaro, Torana and VW "Speed Buggy".
The track wasn't too bad in the morning but due to flooding in "The Dipper" and "The Crossover", we were "limited" to "The National" circuit which was awesome since that meant we got to do 3 laps on the longest circuit, and had 2 long straights. My first lap was quite timid but I got braver as the morning progressed and really enjoyed myself as I got familiar with the track. Sharing the racetrack with Ferraris and Porsches meant that my ego didn't get too bruised as I waived them through on the straights and the kids thought it was great as we bunched up through the bends amongst the other cars. I did have one "win" on the day though, the Honda S2000 driver wanted to know if Gina had a turbo because he couldn't believe that he couldn't catch her on the track. I'd like to say it was due to my awesome driving skills but in reality I must thank AEM, Flyin' Miata, Boss Frog, 949 Racing and Toyo, their aftermarket "mods" really allow the SE to be the car it always should have been. I reckon the "wrinkle red" touches in the engine bay were worth a few "killerwasps" too because everyone knows that red stuff makes your car go faster.
The kids were great too, some of them could rattle off the model of every car they'd been in while others were simply happy to just be going fast around a race track; not one of them wanted to go slow and some of them could barely see out. I was tempted to tell a few "porky pies" to the shorter kids as the faster cars passed by, telling them "Yeah, we just overtook another Ferrari!". A Ferrari driver in the pits told me that one of the kids he was driving "flipped the bird" as they passed a slower car which I thought was pretty funny. Some of the kids were pretty big too. I think that every "Fiery" hopped in the passenger seat of a Ferrari for a few hot laps. When I pulled into the pit to drop one of the kids off, one of the fathers looked left, then right to see if anyone wanted to get in, then hopped in. He was quite surprised at how well Gina handled and I believe has now re-assesed his opinion of MX-5s. The "hands-down" best kid on the day was "The Stig"; he kept his white helmet on the whole day and Lisa got the chance to take him for a spin on the track.
Just before lunch, the two fire trucks did a few circuits which was something I never thought I'd see at a racetrack.
We stopped at 12:30pm for lunch and speeches/thankyous. During lunch, Stuart (aka MINX) got his "Celebrity for a Day" moment when one of the kids asked him to sign the Queensland MX-5 Car Club cap that Stuart had given him. Lisa chuckled to me that "We're never going to hear the end of this!" and Stuart was quite surprised about the whole thing. Me, I reckon that kid's pretty smart and I'm going to keep my eyes peeled on eBay for the "Genuine Queensland MX-5 Car Club cap, signed by Stuart Lutz" listing because I reckon that's a pretty rare collectors item and it could be worth "big bucks" one day.
The rain started coming down during lunch and I wasn't too keen to go out on the track again. It turned out that the other "MX-5ers" weren't too keen either so after watching a few of the braver souls on the track for about an hour in the rain I returned home. Unfortunately for the guys still at the track, the weather just got worse.
Despite the rain-shortened day, I had a great time and the kids enjoyed themselves too (both old and young).
As I said earlier, this was the first time I'd been on a race track and Gina was rock solid despite the gorilla behind the wheel - these really are great little cars. Now I need to fit my Adaptronic 440 ECU for even more fun!
She loved it and wanted a photo with her sitting in the car when we got back to the pits.
