MX-5 Club of NSW track day - Wakefield Park
The first club trackday at Wakefield Park for 2011 after a long two months break over the summer. The weather forecast was for scattered showers, but thankfully they never arrived. Instead we had a warm sunny day, fairly high humidity and a strong westerly wind blowing all day. As I wrote a few days ago, this meant that we were heading into the strong wind on the run down the hill from turn 5 to the fish-hook, and then all the way down the back straight. So the conditions meant that most of the regulars were around a second or so slower than their PBs.
There was a very strong turnout of 72 drivers and would have been a few more but for some late withdrawals. I was asked to help out with the driver training for the first time, and enjoyed every minute of coaching my first student ... Brad Johnson. He and his wife Clare joined the club in late 2010 and this was their first visit to Wakefield Park. They enjoyed themselves and I look forward to seeing them at more track days in future. In fact, I think Clare will be doing the driver training day at Marulan next month.
After the success of the Interstate Challenge at Phillip Island in December, Mike Hicks decided to modify the format slightly. Rather than aiming for runs of 4 laps each, we started with 8 minute runs, and that was later cut back to 7 minute runs. This meant we had either 6 or 5 laps per run, and the faster guys snuck in an extra lap on top of that. I think everyone agreed that the new format was an improvement because it gave us all a little bit extra time out on the track.
A handful of drivers actually managed to improve their PBs, which was a great effort in the circumstances:
Steve Green (modified NB) 1:12.71 (-0.72s)
Craig Gartlacher (turbo NA6) 1:12.27 (-1.20s)
Robert Young (modified NC) 1:15.02 (-2.40s)
Ralph Thompson (modified NC) 1:15.86 (-1.05s)
Peter Browning (modified NA6) 1:16.28 (-0.40s)
The quickest MX-5 on the day was Brett Lansley (Class 7 Turbo NB8A) with a 1:10.36, followed by Mark Hellmund (Class 6) with a 1:11.05. Val Stewart had the fastest car on the day with a 1:08.36 in her RX7 (Class 9 / Group 2B), which was an identical time to her last club run in December.
My best lap was a 1:18.89 in the third run (1.89s off my PB), which saw me finish second in Class 1 behind Allan Cruz. I simply couldn't get anywhere near Allan and his best lap of 1:17.99. Allan started immediately behind me all day, and I can only speculate that being able to chase me down must have been inspirational for him!
Unfortunately, his day ended early on the 4th run when a small coolant hose split, sprayed coolant on the track and caused him to spin suddenly on turn 9. He was lucky not to get T-boned by a silver NB that understeered off the track seconds later. I watched it all happen in my rear-view mirror. Scary stuff!Due to the high number of entrants, there was no regularity event. Other class winners were:
Class 2 (Std NB): Brad Carpenter 1:17.19 (ahead of Glenn Thomas by 0.01s!!!)
Class 3 (Std NC): Stuart James 1:16.99
Class 4 (Std NA/NB on R-specs): Ian Vickers 1:17.49 (sole entrant)
Class 5 (Mod NA6): Peter Browning 1:15.88 (impressive effort from mitch_f1 to finish second!)
Class 8 (Group 2F): Dennis Brady 1:11.76 ("Old & Bold" winner)
Class 10 (non-MX5s): Craig Hasler (E36) 1:11.19
Class 11 (visitors): Kayne Hasler (Evo) 1:14.28
Once again, I got video of every one of my runs, but didn't have any spectacular spins. I did run wide onto the dirt a few times between turns 4 and 5, but managed to hold it each time and line it up for turn 5. The video below is from my 3rd run and features laps 3 and 4 which were the only ones that dipped into the 1:18s. As you can see, my slow times were not for lack of trying!
And it could have been a very bad start to the day if Fiona hadn't noticed a dull glow from the parking lights of Little Reddy, parked out front last night 
. I must have bumped the lights switch somehow during the day 
. Lucky! So I put the battery on a charger overnight and now just need to connect it up and re-pack the boot. 
The queue for signing in took about half an hour to get through because they were hand-writing details on the scrutineering sheets. One fussy scrutineer was chewing out every NA/NB driver for their BD rollbar, claiming it was illegal because there was less than 50mm head clearance. Never mind the fact that BD rollbars are ADR and CAMS compliant, and have been approved for use at Supersprints for many years. Said scrutineer also had a go at me for removing my front number plate (which I always do to maximise flow into the air intake) - perhaps I should have directed him to clause 1.10 of the Vehicle Regulations: "
. Fair enough, there were 109 drivers so I wasn't expecting much track time. But it has to be said that NSWRRC could learn 
