Club Motorkhana Day

02 July 2015 / Story by Josh Allen, photos by Grant Webber, Greg Unger & David Lawler

The excited but bleary eyed Hunter contingent met at the Twin Servos just before 6am for a quick coffee and chat, before heading down to Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek. Despite building up a hefty (though legally obtained) lead on the M1, Yasmin and I ended up arriving a few minutes behind the others. This was due to the GPS inadvertently being set to "Shortest Route" rather than "Fastest Time", causing us to leave the M7 early, and travel the backroads to Eastern Creek for the final 5 km's. It did however save us around $2 in tolls.

Registration and scrutineering were fairly uneventful, but during the driver briefing there were some frightened looks exchanged when the entrants first saw the test layout sheets. The fear proved to be unfounded, as the courses were relatively easy to navigate after a few minutes of study, especially for those of us with navigators. Marriages were strengthened, as were sibling rivalries, with more than a few involuntary handbrake turns.

Those of us with 2 drivers per car had to quickly learn where the high points on the skidpan were, to avoid getting shoes full of water each time we swapped seats between runs. Some people are faster learners than others, and combined with the time spent walking around the timing area, I ended up with very soggy feet and soaking wet socks by the end of the day.

Some of the cars got quite upset with the size of their wheels, since this was the first time they had been thrown into such tight corners so vigorously. The other Hunter Josh had to feed his suspension a quick teaspoon of concrete to harden it up, while I ghetto-rolled my arches with a wheel brace in between runs, to provide a little more clearance.

A lot of fun was had by all, and all the cones survived until it was time to leave, despite copping a good beating. One entrant even tried taking his favourite cone home. Three times! The first time it took a few minutes to retrieve the cone from his wheel arch, but after a bit of practice, the search and rescue team were extracting the kidnapped cones in mere moments.

Thanks to everyone for participating, and for putting in 110% effort. Even though we were only driving for less than a minute at a time, waiting 10 minutes or more between runs, there was never a dull moment.
Special thanks to the organisers and officals, especially those of you that we roped in with very little notice to time the runs. We all really appreciate the effort and dedication it took from Diann, Grant, Andrew and Bowden, among others, to stand out on the shallow concrete waterfall for almost 8 hours.
Extra special thanks to the trainers. The verbal training provided was almost as good as seeing the trainers driving other peoples cars like they're stolen. The experience as a whole was worth a good deal more than $50 each.

Click on these links to see lots more pictures from Grant Webber, Greg Unger and David Lawler.

The next Club Motorkhana Day is on Sunday 6th December. See you there!