CAMS NSW Supersprint Round 5

14 August 2014 / Words by David Lawler, Photos by Mariano Loisso (flatshifting.com)

2014 NSW Supersprint Round 5, Sunday 10th August, at Sydney Motorsport Park GP Circuit.

A number of supersprint regulars who had been at the Phillip Island 6-Hour the previous weekend understandably chose to miss this event, so numbers were down slightly on previous supersprint rounds. Even so, the 22 members who represented the club scored 446 points, beating the ARDC with 325 points.

Ed Cory was unable to bring his race car up from Canberra due to problems with his tow vehicle, but he still drove up in his road-registered MX-5 aka "the green machine", to compete and rack up some points. Unfortunately that car is much slower than the race car he normally drives, and that along with some tyre problems resulted in Ed placing much lower in class 4B than usual.

Also in class 4B, Ian Combes made a return after being being away from track events since the first supersprint round in February, where he had an early day after his car developed a serious oil leak. Since then the car has had a complete rebuild including some significant upgrades to the engine. Unfortunately it was not ready in time, and so Ian made a last minute change to share another MX-5 in 4B.

Phil Abrahams has had some bad luck recently with his Vortex, and that continued with a clutch failure on the warm up lap of his first run meaning that Phil did not complete even one lap.

2014 NSW Supersprint Round 5 results summary

Class 1B - Bryan Shedden and Keith Monaghan were 1st & 2nd
Class 1D - Mike Kelsey took out 1st
Class 2A - Scott McGarry was 1st and Jim Glissan was 3rd
Class 2B - Ralph Thompson, Russ Maxwell and Dennis Chiswick took the same places as last supersprint with 1st, 3rd and 5th, and with John Karayannis 6th
Class 2C - Phil Ashton and Luke Kovacic were 4th & 5th, following a trio of Porsches
Class 3C - Ray Estreich got 7th against some very strong opposition
Class 4B - David Lawler and Steve Green were 1st & 2nd, and Ed Cory and Ian Combes were 5th & 6th.
Class 5B - Phil Abraham unfortunately didn't get a result as result of his clutch failure
Class 6A - Tony King was 2nd
Class SVB - Gus Elias and Mike Hicks were 2nd & 3rd
Class SVD - Matt & Greg Perry in their Skyline were 7th & 9th against some very fast cars

There were two unfortunate incidents at this supersprint. John Karayannis had a spin at turn 4 which resulted in his car sliding broadside into the tyre barrier in front of the South Circuit control tower. Late in the day, Phil Ashton had an on-track coming together with a Commodore, resulting in some minor damage to his car. Both cars were still driveable.

With this result the MX-5 club now leads the ARDC in the championship by 277 points, which is a good but not unasaleable lead with 2 rounds to go.

The next supersprint round is on Sunday 7th September at Wakefield Park. Supporters are very welcome. Entry to the circuit is free for spectators, so come along on 7th September at Wakefield Park and support TeamMX5.

More pictures taken at the event by Mariano Loisso are available here.