NSW MX5 Cup - First round open

[MX5CupRacing]

What a day for the inaugural Cup race of 2014. Some initiation for the newbies. Absolutely torrential rain for a large part of the day and steady to heavy for most of the rest of the day.

We had 15 cars on the qualifying grid with one already withdrawn with issues that morning, and 2 other cars not able to make the weekend. A great turnout on the 300 weekend.

3 first timers took to the field, and they performed outstandingly in at times atrocious conditions. A more complete write up will follow but for now, suffice to say, that despite competitive and close racing it was clean and definitely good spirited.

With the committee members all involved in practice and qualifying sessions on Saturday, it was a busy day, so thanks for your patience and understanding. Wakefield had an issue with the label printer for the trophies, these will either be forwarded to you or you can collect them at the next round. Beers/drinks were postponed until the next round due to the 300 briefing being scheduled at 6pm (which didn’t finish until 6.45ish).

We shall announce when the Points table has been posted on the Club website.

As an end note, I would like to thank everybody that turned up and went out there and had a go. From the big smiles all round I think we can safely say they had fun. Great to have Chris, from Victoria, in our midst too.

I would like to thank Luke Otten, Daniel Deckers and Chris Quick for their hard work and perseverance in getting this series off the ground. Bring on the next round!

Craig.

[Celluloid Retina]

Wow, what a weekend! I can't thank enough, everyone involved in pulling the MX5 Cup together, Craig Durrant, Luke Otten, Daniel Deckers, Chris Quick and i'm sure there are others. Each of you went so far out of your way to make this an approachable and easy event to be a part of, I've never had so much fun in my life.

It was a pretty tricky initiation for us first timers, lining up on the grid in pouring rain for our first race. I had my own 'what the hell am I doing here?' moment when the red light went on, but then it was courteous but hard racing all the way. For people who don't have the budget to be replacing panels every meeting, it was great to be surrounded by people that you knew would do the right thing by you, and I think a lot of that came from the ethos of the series that you guys have set up.

Big thanks from me personally to the guys at Deckspeed for getting me there with a car that will put hairs on your chest, but that didn't miss a beat all weekend. They were a massive help to someone like me who is completely spanner illiterate. Also to Russell Harris who was my assigned mentor for the weekend, gave me so much help along with Andy Harris, another part of the system set up by you guys that made this such an easy thing to be involved in (although he could have let me beat him just once?). Lets hope we can encourage more people to get involved because lining up with 15 cars on the Saturday was a fantastic experience, lining up with 36 cars on the Sunday, my mind was asploding!

The 'most improved' award was much appreciated, thanks to Audio Technica (who doesn't love prizes?!). My tip for anyone wanting to take it out next time is to hire a car that scares the crap out of you initially, then slowly come to terms with it over the weekend.

Big thanks,

Stuart McFadyen

[mazmad]

Here's a screen grab of T1 at the start of the 4th race of the day. There is a car just in front of me somewhere. And no, the vid doesnt make it look worse than it was - it was that bad!



Stuart you drove the heck out of that car....you bugger! ;)

[Celluloid Retina]

No the video really doesn't make it look worse than it was! I had a similar view behind Russell whose car happens to be the same colour as all the spray. I knew we were at turn 1 when he'd have a dab of the brakes and two little red dots would appear in the mist.

Thanks Craig!... Though I was half expecting a screen grab of car 4 broadside at turn 9 with the occupant wrestling an octopus.

[david_syd_au]

I would also like to thank the MX-5 Cup organising panel. They have put in a lot of work to create and organise this series since it was first raised in September last year. It was their hard work which made it possible for this first event to be so successful.

To my personal experience of the day. After 2 and a half years of track days, supersprints and other sundry track events, the rain gods finally caught up with me, and my first racing event was also my first wet track event. One of the advantages of hiring a car for the event from an established racing organsation, such as Stuart did from Deckspeed, is that you have the backing of that team with resources (ie tyres), setup and driving advice. Without that direct support behind me, I still received plenty of good advice from other drivers, but had to make the best of the single set of R-specs that I own, which turned out to be very poor performers in the wet.

Russ Maxwell and I had a good dice in the first race, both slipping around all over the place, until I got past him on the 2nd last lap, although in part because he was being kind and gave me lots of room. For the remaining races he scored a set of wets from his car provider, and ran off to play with the others, leaving me to slide around at the tail of the field.
Still lots of fun, especially doing big slides through turn 10 most laps to the applause of the flaggie stationed at the start of pit lane :-)

Thanks again to the MX-5 Cup panel, and I look forward to the next one, although, I plan to be better prepared next time.

[MrsB]

Hi Guys
Thankyou to everyone involved in putting together the first MX5 Cup. I had a great day albeit in challenging conditions. My car was certainly a handful especially on intermediate tyres in qualifying. Special shout out to David Stone who generously gave his time to offer me support and local knowledge. Much appreciated. We also had a great Wakefield 300 Race despite the ending being not quite what we would have liked. We sat in 5th positions for a great deal of the race until the front suspension broke which cost Daniel his door! Owen and Brad did a great job keeping the car in the top 10 for as long as they could and then with 8 laps to the finish were forced to make the difficult decision to withdraw.

Thank you all once again and I wish you the best of luck with the series, I wish we had the same support for racing here in Victoria.

Chris

[david_syd_au]

Thank you all once again and I wish you the best of luck with the series, I wish we had the same support for racing here in Victoria.
Chris

Maybe you should suggest running a round of the 2015 NSW MX-5 Cup at Winton?
:-))))

[david_syd_au]

Here is a lap from race 3 last Saturday, demonstrating the grip problems I experienced all day, with plough understeer into corners, especially slow corners like 2 and the fish-hook, oversteer coming out of corners, and the odd mid-corner slide. I was lucky that I only had one spin all day!

I was running on new-that-day Nitto NT01 R-specs, which is the tyre I used all last year for supersprints and track days.

In one race when Daniel Deckers lapped me, I tried following in his wheel tracks to see if that line improved my grip. It didn't :-(

Any opinions?
Were my problems mainly due to tyres, technique, or inevitably, a combination of both?

[MX5CupRacing]

The results and points tally from Round 1 can be seen here:

http://nsw.mx5.com.au/motorsport/mx-5-cup

[Deckspeed Racing]

Chris great to have you guys come and race with us, difficult conditions for our first round but I think everone had a ball, hope you come back and do some more, bad luck for owen in the 300 looked like they where having a strong run up to that point.

David I think your doing an amazing job on those tyres that I would classify as death donuts. I have used nittos once in the past because the buy price looked so attractive. What I found is that they performed marginally better than a good road tyre but wore out twice as quick, that to me made them super expensive, if you spend under double the amount initially on a quallity tyre, you will find they last 3 to 4 times longer and mantain there performce. If you look at David stone as an example he bought A050 2 and a half years ago has done over 2000 race km on them and can still do a high 1.07 on them, thats how to go racing cheap.

Big thankyou to all the competitors and everybody involved can't wait for the next round

Daniel

[MrsB]

Thank you all once again and I wish you the best of luck with the series, I wish we had the same support for racing here in Victoria.
Chris

Maybe you should suggest running a round of the 2015 NSW MX-5 Cup at Winton?
:-))))

David I like your way if thinking [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES]

[frog_a_lot]

When is the next NSW event? Is it the MRA one on 27th April?

Does the logbook need to be from same body as license? ie if i have a CAMS logbook but an AASA license? Or do they both need to be the same?
What FIA standard do gloves and shoes need to be?
Do you need window nets?

Cheers guys

[mazmad]

When is the next NSW event? Is it the MRA one on 27th April?

Correct.

Does the logbook need to be from same body as license? ie if i have a CAMS logbook but an AASA license? Or do they both need to be the same?

The official line is - as it is a AASA event - AASA 'prefer' AASA licence and logbook, but will accept either combination.

What FIA standard do gloves and shoes need to be?

8856-2000

Do you need window nets?

No. As the vehicle is classified as an 'open' vehicle it is not required. (Some scrutineers get picky on that but more from lack of understanding of the classification of an mx5 I think)

[evil_weevil]

I always thought you needed the AASA log book regardless if you had a CAMS log book?

[david_syd_au]

I always thought you needed the AASA log book regardless if you had a CAMS log book?

I ran in the Saturday MX-5 Cup races after using a AASA National Race license for me, and a CAMS log book for my car.