Club Track Day at Wakefield Park - Round 8
11 June 2019 / Story by Joe Kovacic, Photos by Rob Wilko
A very foggy and cold start greeted a full field of 82 enthusiastic motorsport competitors for Round 8 of Club Trackdays at Wakefield Park. We welcomed 19 members of the MX-5 Club of Victoria & Tasmania who were here to defend their annual NSW/VIC Interstate Challenge title.
Thank you to our joint Clerk of Courses Ian and David and all our other officials on organising such a large event very efficiently. Unfortunately, due to a very heavy and persistent fog that settled on the track, we had a delayed start to the event. The very large field of drivers were split into six run groups including 4 first timers. We used the foggy conditions to give our Victorians and first timers three observations laps behind the pace car. Finally when the fog lifted we managed to get the first group out by 10:30am. After the first session, the Grid Marshall Joe Kovacic readjusted the groups and grid positions to give all competitors the best chance at improving on their lap times. Most drivers improved on their lap times with some very impressive record lap times being set. We managed to get five run sessions with 38 timed laps, which was a great result considering the delayed start and an unusually large number of drivers.
Congratulations to Brendan Davis from the MX-5 Club of Victoria & Tasmania on the fastest lap of the day in a time of 1:02.945. Brendan managed to surpass our very own Todd Herring who also set a new class 10 lap record for our Club (1:03.207). There were a lot of competitive battles in all the Club Classes and Interstate Classes. Sadly for our Club, the Victorians caught us by surprise with a couple of flyers in the final session to boost their tally and claim the title for the NSW/VIC Interstate Challenge for a record fourth year in a row.
Thank you to all our motorsport officials who made the day possible, and congratulations to all the other drivers on their results as follows.
Class | 1st Place | Time | 2nd Place | Time |
1 | Michael DeMaio | 1:14.099 | Greg Unger | 1:17.293 |
2 | Jason Atkins | 1:14.851 | James Burke | 1:17.266 |
3 | Jie Ren | 1:10.867 | ||
4 | Jamie Martin | 1:13.995 | Andrew Digney | 1:16.567 |
5 | Gerardo Martin | 1:13.640 | Matt Tarrant | 1:14.386 |
6 | Gustavo Elias | 1:11.088 | John Karayannis | 1:12.183 |
7 | Greg Bunn | 1:10.404 | Peter Feutrill | 1:12.457 |
8 | Christopher Lowry | 1:13.015 | Alan Gibson | 1:17.007 |
9 | Phil Ashton | 1:10.243 | Marty Voormeulen | 1:12.043 |
10 | Todd Herring | 1:03.207 | Curran Brennan | 1:04.898 |
11 | Keith Bridgement | 1:10.981 | Peter Barnwell | 1:12.055 |
Click here for the complete results
Click here for the Interstate Challenge Scoring
Click here for Rob Wilko's complete photo album (696 photos)