MX5 Club Run to and Parade at Bathurst for 12hr Race Feb9&10

[guss]

What a great day! Driving at Mount Panorama was epic! Thanks to everyone who organised the day!

[mazmad]

Second that Gus. Fantastic weekend, thanks to Joe again for organising this.

Some REALLY quick cars out there today . And they sound AMAZING, no noise restrictions at Bathurst. The Ferraris and R8s - wow, they sound soooo good.

Plenty of thrills and spills. Ric Shaw flying the Mazda flag in his rx7, think he qualified in 38th, first in his class.

Will post pics and vid in the next few days.

[Guran]

Fabulous effort guys! Well done Joe!

Had to laugh when I saw the cars queued opposite. They're all 86s and AE86s if I'm not mistaken.

[Okibi]

Looks like a great day, hope there's more pics or some in car footage.

[mazmad]

Didn't count Bryan, but the other car clubs parading consisted of about 20? 86/BRZs and one 500 something Merc convertible.

I have pics and footage to load, will get them up soon

VERY hot. It was 33 deg trackside - and apparently 54 degrees on the track!

[Midori]

Look forward to seeing the other photos plus well done to all who went and especially to Joe

[guss]

Looks like a great day, hope there's more pics or some in car footage.

[Midori]

A picture tells a thousand words but a video is a book. Get vid

[Villa]

Wow what a great event! Anytime you get to appreciate such a great breadth of engineering in one spot is pretty special.
Might need to make a point of getting to this in future years.

[Luke]

Weekend was good overall.

The drive up from Penrith was fairly hassle free with little traffic. But boy is the ever changing speeds limits up the mountains a real pain. 60 to 70 to 80 and repeat.

Saturday racing was a bit of a let down with multiple safety car's. To much ego I reckon. I'm surprised that the HQ's had a 1 hour race at the end.
The pit complex fire evacuation was also funny yet rediculous. From what i heard the alarm was set off by a kettle!!! All teams, officials and spectators were ordered off the building. Think they need to review their Fire and Vesda panel settings for race meetings.

First time I have ever dríven around the mountain (been a passenger before) but boy is the 60km/h limit frustrating. I also noticed cops coming onto the track just after we did the Parade lap to book the local residents going 5k's over during the mid-day track open period.

The overall car clubs attendance was poor in terms of numbers, but much the same as last year.
Only MX-5 Club of NSW(11 cars), the new 86 club (they had over 20 of them, but most disappeared after the parade lap on Saturday) and a couple cars from BMW Club of QLD.
Peugeot brought there best range of cars for years on display which was good to see.
Subaru had the new Forester, but it really is the wrong car in the wrong place.

We had a good thunder storm on Saturday night to cool everything down.

There were 5/11 cars left for Sunday.
We all got there for the start of the race.
Pity this year they started at 7am, vs 6am of last year. No glowing brakes and exhaust flames visible this year.

On Sunday we sort of all did our own thing driving around the perimeter of the track to see all the different vantage spots. Bumped into others several times during the day.
I got to see the Nissan GT-R snap its rear right wheel off at the dipper as I was in the right place at the right time. Pity no Camera was in my hand. I'm surprised that he dragged it all the way to the pits and finished the race.

The Ford guys running the GT Falcon in class D were really good. Would give you time to talk about the car etc. Helps owning a Tickford based car as well I guess.
Looking at it, it was the closest thing to a production car in the whole field. The other Class D and E cars have lots more mods than this thing had. The rims were just the 18x8 Typhoon rims from 2005 and weighed a ton. Every other "production car" had lightweight rims. I know its within the rules to change the things that they do, but its nice to see something out there that you can pretty much screw your number plates back onto and drive home(bar the cage ans slicks because of ADR's!!!).

I left in the afternoon about 2-3PM from memory from the Kelso after a bit of roast lunch.
Went via the Bell's line of road and had a fairly good traffic free run until I got to Bilpin. Lots of people from the mountains say this way is more dangerous, but boy is it a lot more fun with no Traffic lights and lots of high speed corners. I went past 3 highway Patrols this way though.

Watched the last 1 hour of the race via the web stream at Home.

Note
TV highlights:
SBS will broadcast a 3-hour highlights program at midday on 17 February 2013.

[mazmad]

I also noticed cops coming onto the track just after we did the Parade lap to book the local residents going 5k's over during the mid-day track open period.

Didn't see any so I hung back a bit from the car in front and then booted it into a couple of the corners. Lucky......

[PhilM]

This event is going to get even bigger, so come next year before the crowd gets too big. You can still wander around any parts of the track and find a vantage point on the fence.
We flew the banner in the paddock all weekend.

[Guran]

Love your work Phil.

[mazmad]

THis doofus has forgotten how to embed video.

In the meantime... the 12 hour start

http://youtu.be/AaDKPcRxQ9A One excited petrol head.

I have some more I will load when I rediscover that brain cell.

[mazmad]