2024 MX-5 Club Track Day Round 3 - 28th September

27 October 2024 / ian Combes

Story : Ian Combes, Photo Rob Wilko

For this track day, the club tried something different with a night track day at the Amaroo Circuit of Sydney Motorsport Park. This may have partly been due to the difficulty of getting dates at Sydney Motorsport Park, but was also to gauge interest in night events. Rather foolishly, I put my hand up to be Clerk of Course for this event. However, the way that the weather turned out, being in Control Tower wasn’t so bad…

As has been the case in 2024 (and 2023) we were concerned with numbers for the event, but in end, we had a field of 53 venture out on Saturday night. This particular weekend had a very annoying patchy rain activity taking place, so everyone had their fingers and toes crossed. A Four-hour gap in the rain wasn’t too much to ask for, was it?

We actually got through a reasonable part of the event, but then we got a light bit of drizzle – not wet, but enough to make you wonder how much grip there was out there. Later on, we copped another light shower. Being the Amaroo Circuit, there is no cover in the paddock area, so I’m guessing that many took refuge inside…

Given the conditions, there were surprisingly few spins – everyone took a cautious approach to the event, which was great. One rotation in turn 5 did give us palpitations, but fortunately the wall was far enough away.

Most competitors had a good night I think. I’m sure that Bryan Shedden has had many good days at the Amaroo Circuit, but this wasn’t one – out early on with a power steering failure. I know how you feel… Never tried an NC without power steering, but know all about an NB without…

Just when we thought we were about to get through the night without incident, our Chief Scrutineer, Gerardo Martin, broke a steering end-link coming through esses, putting him on course for the wall in front of the tower. Fortunatately, Gerado was able to straighten the car enough to get the car side-on. Not great, but potentially less problematic than a front-ender. Certainly generated some excitement for the flag marshals at Start/Finish.

At this event, we decided to rely on the Mylaps warning light panels around the track. At night, these stand out very well. The included the checkered flag – these light panels are repeated several times around the track, making is better than the manually waved two checkered flags. This worked pretty well, but was shown to be not quite perfect… The lesson learned there I think is to keep the In-Board at 15A.

The class winners are as follows:

Class	Driver	Lap time	Percentage
Standard (NC)	Chris Andy	66.831	98.61%
Clubman	Luke Kovacic	64.335	97.30%
Super Clubman	Gerado Martin	66.734	98.38%
Modified	Kyle Robertson	67.716	94.36%
Open	Ian Spinks	62.643	95.94%
Non-MX-5	Rod Tippett	66.738
Visitor	Jacques van Deventer	68.795
Regularity	Craig Franklin	25 points

 

Congratulations to the class winners.

As for the night track day – we will review the event, and solicit feedback from the competitors. The night event is shorter than a day-time event. This event had novelty value, but it is unclear what the support would be for more events.