Club Track Day at SMP South Circuit
01 September 2015 / Words by David Lawler, photos by Andrew Edgar
The first club track day of the 2015/2016 competition year was run at Sydney Motor Sport Park South Circuit on Saturday 29th August 2015. This track day was also the annual Interstate Challenge event between teams representing the MX-5 Club of Victoria and Tasmania, and the MX-5 Club of NSW.
With 78 drivers organised into 7 run groups, it was going to a very busy day. Conditions were almost ideal, with a prediction of no rain and a top of 20 degress. Obviously the Victorians didn't organise the weather!
To assist the visiting drivers from the Vic&Tas club, they were given a 3 lap familiarisation run behind a course car, with each having an experienced NSW driver in the passenger seat to give some track tips.
Starting from 9:30am, drivers had the opportunity for 5 runs before the day concluded just after 4pm. Greg Bunn managed to squeeze in 32 timed laps, one more than anyone else. Did you sneek in a few extras Greg?
This is the first MX-5 Club track where we used on-car timing transponders, and although there were a few units that were found to be faulty during the first session, the system proved to be effective over the day.
Fastest on the day was Daniel Aplin in his Nissan engined MX-5, with a best time of 58.8615 seconds and a new record for an MX-5 on this circuit.
Cameron Macarthur caused some crowd excitement late in the day when he took his new and unmodified MX-5 ND for a run. It wasn't as fast as his turbo race car, but with a lap time of just over 1:10, it compared well against the typical times of the standard NA, NB and NC MX-5s in classes 1 & 2.
There were no major incidents, although Gus Elias did provide some entertainment with a very spectacular spin right in front of the control tower (video link). Unfortunately it resulted in some suspension issues which caused him problems for the remainder of the day.
The Vic&Tas drivers had never driven on the South Circuit before, and they found it very challenging. That probably helped contribute to a handy win by the NSW team with 140 points, while the Vic&Tas team scored 94 points. A summary of the Interstate Challenge and full results are here.
Thanks to all the officials who contributed to the day. Organising and running our South Circuit track days requires lots of people, and we are lucky that so many members of our club are so generous with their time. Please take a moment to read a brief story I wrote titled "How many officials does it take to organise and run a track day?"
A special thanks to Ian Williams and Lester Gough. They are not MX-5 Club members, but they came along and lent their expertise to help make the day a success.
The next MX-5 Club track day is at Wakefield Park on Monday 14th September. It follows the NSW Supersprint event being run by the MX-5 Club on Sunday 13th September. If you can help with running that supersprint event, and so also gain a 50% discount on your track day entry, please contact me ASAP.
Track day results are available:
More photos by Andrew Edgar are in his facebook album here.
