Nulon Nationals - Round 2 - Wakefield Park
15 August 2014 / Words by Glenn Thomas, Photos by Dave Oliver Photography (dophoto.com.au)
Nulon Nationals Round 2 at Wakefield Park on Friday 4th July 2014
The Nulon Nationals is a 3 round club based event designed to bring together a huge range of cars and people who share a love of racing and building cars as the common theme. The variance in the cars was huge as they ranged from dedicated highly developed track cars, through significantly modified road cars and the everyday unmodified drives.
Eight clubs from far and wide took part in the 2nd round of the Nulon Nationals held at Wakefield Park Raceway and wow what a day it was. The day really communicated the passion that lives within the motorsport community – particularly at the enthusiast level. This same passion is shared by the Nulon team, for both their products and motorsport, as displayed by their fantastic support of grass roots motorsport. Nulon’s alignment to, and support of, the enthusiast level of motorsport reflects their confidence in the product range as they are willing place these products smack bang into the middle of one of the communities that are most likely to uncover whether this range can withstand the demanding requirements of the enthusiast. Great move, great results and well done Nulon!
There were a number more powerful cars very surprised to see the MX-5s pass them in the corners and, while that may not sway them away from the cars that they are currently passionate about, I’m fairly confident that they gained a level of respect for what our little cars can offer.
While the temperature was reading -5.4c before sunrise, as the sun came up we knew it was going to be a good day of racing. People started scraping the ice off their windscreens and, just after 9:00am the track came to life with Time Attack cars taking to the track producing very quick times. As the day went on, these cars managed to get down to 1:00 though to 1:03 – that’s fast!
The Nulon team had anticipated that there was scope for some rivalry between some specific clubs and thought that this would be where the real battles would take place. To this end many were looking forward to the expected close competition between the NSW MX-5 the 86 Drivers clubs. The Nulon boys even made a point putting the two clubs in cabins next to each other - just so they could eye each other off from 10 paces. The Nulon team noted that “These cars are so different yet so similar, both have great weight distribution, balance and corner speed”. When you look at the final standings you will see they upset a lot of cars that wrote them off.
Both David Stone (1:07) and Verne Johnson (1:08) performed exceptionally well finishing in the top third of the event, both scoring big points for the MX-5 team. This was a really impressive effort when we consider that this was far from being a level playing field. Steve Green (1:10) and Patrick Bramston (1:12) also regularly left many significantly modified high powered cars in their wake and again earned valuable team points. Glenn Thomas (1:13), Todd Herring (1:14) and Keith Monahan (1:17) were all involved in some very interesting duals; again leaving many highly powered cars in their wake. Well done Team MX-5!
Oh! The MX-5 and 86/BRZ show down? While Nulon’s Tunehouse significantly modified BZR posted the fastest time (1:04), the rest of the MX-5/86 field competed closely just as expected; when we look across the entire field, the MX-5 was ahead by a good nose!
More photos from the event by David Oliver Photography are available here.
