The Big Trip to Winton
2-5 March 2012For the last few years, I've been champing at the bit to have a drive on the circuit at Winton. I planned to go last August, but had to cut my spending when I bent the bimmer at Wakefield. No excuses this year. I booked myself in for AROCA's Driver Training & Racecraft day on the Saturday ($250 including lunch), plus the Sprints on the Sunday ($180 including Dorian hire) - both on the
short circuit of 2.0km length. All the motels in Benalla were booked out due to a girls basketball tournament in town, so I landed a tent site at the caravan park and hoped for good weather. Sure enough, the rain bucketed down.
On Friday morning, I packed Little Reddy with all my track and camping gear, and hit the road at 10:30am. Six hours on the Hume Highway with scattered showers most of the way, and a half hour for lunch and fuel at Yass meant I arrived at Benalla right on 5pm. There was no rain at Benalla which made for a pleasant afternoon to set up camp. I met up with Rob Downes and Noel Heritage (and family) for beers and pizza. Back at the tent, I passed the time with a viewing of the "Senna" documentary before turning in.
Untitled by
Guran5, on Flickr
Saturday started very early when the rain arrived about 5:30am. Couldn't get back to sleep, so assembled my gear, and headed into town for breakfast with Rob & Noel at the bakery. Arrived at Winton about 7:45am and went through the familiar routine of prepping the car for the track. The format of the day for the 25 participants split into two groups was 25min lecture alternating with 25min on track with an instructor - I was allocated Randy Stagno-Navarra. The lectures were very well designed for newbies, and Randy's advice on cornering lines was very welcome - even more fun was the conversation as we circulated the track. We had three runs in the morning, stopped for a delicious lunch (a rarity at a racetrack!), then another couple runs in the afternoon with training finished at 3pm. It rained constantly and there were deep puddles on several apexes - 42mm fell that day at Benalla. The car was skating around and it was
immense fun playing with throttle steer. Rob came for a ride after lunch and was remarkably quiet for most of the time! Must have scared him.
The last run of the day was solo and we were given 30 minutes, but after 17 laps I'd had enough and came in with five minutes still to go. In the whole day, I managed to avoid any spins and had only one brief excursion at turn 1 with a brake lock-up. There was no official laptiming, but my PerformanceBox spat out the following results:
Run 1: 14 laps, best 1:26.32 (L9), optimal 1:25.57 (with Randy)
Run 2: 13 laps, best 1:23.60 (L2), optimal 1:22.34 (with Randy)
Run 3: 9 laps, best 1:22.51 (L6), optimal 1:22.14 (with Randy)
Run 4: 10 laps, best 1:23.60 (L6), optimal 1:22.56 (with Rob)
Run 5: 17 laps, best 1:22.29 (L4), optimal 1:21.83 (solo)
Total 63 laps
Back at the caravan park, I discovered that my tent was surrounded by a two-inch deep moat, but everything was dry inside - testiment to a good quality hiking tent. I had dinner with the whole crew at the North Eastern Hotel, refilled the empty fuel tank, and was asleep early after a tiring day.
Untitled by
Guran5, on Flickr
The rain stopped overnight and I had a great sleep in a perfectly dry bed. I packed the tent and gear, and arrived at the track at 7:30am. My raceboots were very soggy from Saturday. The track was still damp for the practice run, and there was a little whispy rain, but it quickly dried up. There were 55 drivers, divided into four run groups. Nearly two thirds of the cars were MX-5s, which was quite funny considering it was an Alfa Romeo event! We started with a 10 minute practice run, and then six 15 minute timed runs each hour, which was enough for 9-10 laps each. A persistent puddle sat on the apex of the first corner in the esses, but it was still a very fast track with new records set in all three Standard classes plus Restricted Open. Rob Downes' old Standard NA record was 1:15.454 and I was thrilled to beat it with a best of 1:15.283 in the last run. Bloody Rob and Noel both went even better with 1:14.407 and 1:14.804! Excellent driving guys. I had one entertaining spin on the second-last run, after carrying a bit too much speed into the first corner of the esses, but otherwise stayed on the black stuff.
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Guran5, on Flickr
Run 1: 7 laps, best 1:18.368 (L6), optimal 1:18.24
Run 2: 9 laps, best 1:17.304 (L9), optimal 1:16.87
Run 3: 9 laps, best 1:16.149 (L9), optimal 1:15.72
Run 4: 10 laps, best 1:15.887 (L5), optimal 1:15.51
Run 5: 9 laps, best 1:15.947 (L4), optimal 1:15.41
Run 6: 12 laps, best 1:15.734 (L4), optimal 1:15.26
Run 7: 10 laps, best 1:15.283 (L8), optimal 1:14.91
Total 66 laps
Natsoft ResultsLooking more closely at Rob's and Noel's results, we were actually a lot closer than the 0.9s and 0.5s gaps suggest. Rob's next best was 1:14.850 and Noel's next best was 1:15.216 - both 0.4s slower than their best laps. In comparison, my next best was only 0.04s slower, so on average I was 0.4s slower than Rob and 0.1s slower than Noel. Watch out next time guys!
That afternoon, I drove to Coreen to stay with my aunt & uncle on their farm. I had to drive through 20cm of water at their gate! It was great catching up with family. I had a lazy Monday morning, then left at noon. Flooding between Walbundrie and Culcairn meant that I had to take an alternate route via Corowa and Albury to access the Hume Highway. Easy trip - lots of flooding at Gundagai but the highway was clear. Saw a nasty crash southbound between Goulburn and Marulan - car on its roof in the gutter! Hope the occupants were OK.
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Guran5, on Flickr
I also set a couple other new personal records ... for
fuel consumption! My lowest is
6.9L/100km from the Yass to Benalla leg on the Hume, and my highest is
19.7L/100km from Sunday at Winton with only the short trips from Benalla to Winton and Winton to Glenrowan extending the range.
It was a fantastic long weekend with almost 170 laps completed at Winton's short circuit. OK, it rained on one day but to be honest, I had MORE fun driving in the wet! Excellent value! I highly recommend the trip to other NSW/ACT residents.
. 63 laps on Saturday + 66 laps on Sunday = 129 laps total. 
. Apart from being thin, they were still in good condition, without any flaking, cracking or spalling 
. I just liked them for their comfortable fit, external seams, longer wrists, and wrist strap.
