The Sporting Register has been competing in this event? since it’s inception 9 years ago with at least one, usually two and sometimes even three teams. This year, teams Wild Dog and Wildhunde took up the challenge with hopes of bettering our previous best and aiming, as always, for a podium finish.
Reports from Joel Martin (Manager of Wild Dog) and Ian Maud (member of Team Wildhunde) follow below with pictures from Joel as well as some from Alex Weymouth.
If anybody else would like to add comments please do so using the comment box below the photogallery or email: editor@sportingregister.com.au. I would also love to add more pictures to the gallery, so if you have any please email them to me.
WILD DOG WEEKEND
Well, we’ve had an eventful weekend.
On the Saturday morning, Dave and Allan Richard’s brand new battery was dead as a post on start up. The result was a costly brand new battery trackside which caused a very frustrated Allan to vent a little. You’ll be pleased to know that when Allan explodes, he explodes with a bang! I think that was the first time I’ve ever heard him swear.
To make things worse Paul Zsidy’s borrowed Escort decided not to play and broke a piston ring on his out lap.
Then at about 10:30, just as the track started to dry – we got another downpour of rain to keep our times well off peak. The track eventually dried and by about midday our fortunes changed.
In fact, we were having so much fun that Dave may have forgotten to check over the car before heading out for his second practise and near the end of session six, ran out of fuel near Turn 1.
We ended the practice day with everyone getting a good run on a dry track. Allan seemed strangely motivated putting down quick times, even when the track wasn’t quite dry. Maybe it could have been that extra energy from the new battery!
Saturday night social was held at the Rusty Water Brewery again this year. Once again everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food and drink and had a great night talking about, well cars mainly. If you’re visiting the Island and looking for a good feed; Teams Wild Dog and Wildhunde highly recommend that you drop in.
Sunday Morning was brisk and sunny, perfect for a day at the track!!!
We all stumbled out of bed in the Brooks? house at about 6 am for breakfast, Ian Maud even whipped up some bacon and eggs for me. (thanks again Ron and Trish for the hospitality)
Preparations were pretty relaxed, the calm before the storm so to speak, which turned out to be quite a true statement.
Allan did us the honour of singing the national anthem, I’m sure he did a good job, but I missed most of his performance due to the fact that I was sprinting from the secretary’s office to Dave’s car on the grid with a replacement Dorian minutes before the event started. Dave’s had gone flat overnight!
Ron had trouble during his first session. His brakes had all but worn out, making driving at speed a little difficult. But he kept his chin up and finished his session and unfortunately had to withdraw afterwards.
After those little hiccups however, things settled down and we flew up the ladder to 10th place at 11am with a stellar first innings from Paul Zsidy. Racking up 50 bonus laps and only 1 penalty
Our timing and pit wall crew: Luke, Steve, Sarah and Clinton worked like a well oiled machine (some would say like clockwork!) and kept the fellas behind the wheel well informed of their progress on the track. They were simply fantastic and the whole team really appreciated their effort. When praised for his excellent spotting, Luke simply said ‘it must be the 25 or so years of doing nothing but watching Motorsport.’ who said that one of our favourite pass-times wouldn’t be useful one day?
At about midday Mark Revitt-Mills decided he’d be rather generous whilst out for his first session and was handing out fuel on every left hand turn of the track. Due to a muddle up with the meatball flag blocking the car number the marshals were calling in, and we weren’t bothering with IN board, thinking he’d seen the meatball flag. It took three laps of confusion before he came in. Fortunately the problem was only a loose fuel cap.
The biggest surprise of the day was Phil Finger. Phil managed to punt his little Corolla around the track for his personal best time of 2:15.9818!!! The only problem was that his nominated time was 2:17 and the cheeky bugger broke it multiple times. However, it was hard to be mad at a bloke with such a big grin on his face, so I blame Paul for giving him some coaching tips.
By 3pm and with only an hour to go, Team Wild dog had dropped to twelfth and then regained 10th, but unfortunately we picked up a few more penalties in the last hour and our final result was 15th place!
15th is my personal best result and the talk amongst the team is that with a tweak here and there we might even pull off a podium next year. Fingers crossed!
If you can make it to the car club meeting on the 14th August, I’ll also try to squeeze out of my prior commitments to hand out the Natsoft time sheets that I’ve edited to show your individual scores and I might even bring some novelty trophies again.
I’d like to take the opportunity to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped out. Whether it was the lovely slices that you made, the dishes you washed that the boys left on the breakfast table, the trips into town for supplies, or even just the moral support, It was all greatly appreciated, as it’s what has made Team Wild Dog such a great team and it makes the six hour even more fun!
Looking forward to next year, the 6-Hour’s 10th anniversary!
Cheers.
Joel.
TEAM WILDHUNDE BARES ITS FANGS AT THE ISLAND
Well, I think most of us felt like doing that after the weekend that perhaps didn?t come from Hell, but certainly a neighbouring property.
Do you remember Friday the 1st of August? Grotty day: chilled, hail, storms?.perfect for motorsport. I ventured out into a steady downpour at a ridiculously early hour Saturday morning and headed the nose (and the rest) south to the Island, to meet up with the rest of Teams Wildhunde and Wild Dog, plus other comrades from the Gippsland Car Club. Matters generally progressed well for our team during practice, with the weather improving to boot. Ray (Porsche) had a good run; Murray and dad Glenn (Alfa) set suitable times; Lachy (240Z) was having a ball playing with the quick people, and appropriately, I got to play in the wet (MR2), which quite suited me. Dave (MGB) set good times but was muttering about fluctuating oil pressure?hmm?..
After yet another round of warnings/encouragement/please be nice/ and this is NOT a race briefings from the officials (who did a magnificent job on the weekend) we got to pack away the toys, clean the sandpit, and head off for showers, cuppas and all things civilised. Like about 2/3 of the team members, I ?chose to stay? at Casa Brooks, where the bedrooms are numerous, the bathrooms voluminous and the tucker keeps attracting team members like blowies to a barbie. As with Joel, I?d like to thank Ron and Trish for so generously opening their home to us for the night.
We spent the evening amidst very pleasant company at Rusty Waters Brewery ? highly recommended despite some rabble from another club trying to out-do our rabble in creating the most noise. CAMS-approved mufflers should be specified.
Sunday morning was frosty but gave rise to a perfect, fine day. Scrutineering was delightfully brief and painless: if your car wasn?t protruding from an oil pool, and the brake lights still worked, you were in ? the hard stuff having been checked the previous day. Team Wildhunde prepped their cars, checked nominated times, called upon the Gods of mechanical well-being and progressively emptied the urn. Murray was to start for us, and I got to be grid girl, after pointedly confirming this did not involve bikinis or lycra: after all, people were still eating breakfast. We gridded up, gave the required cheek to adjacent teams, took photos and watched Lachy ?accompany? the bag-pipe serenade. Eventually the appropriate personnel decided it was actually time to get on with it, and so the day began with much noise, smoke and dust. One early casualty of the mechanical gremlins was Norm Gower from Ballarat with his indecently fast Jap-Mini, whose bonnet stayed in place for at least half a lap, thereafter forming a reference point on the inside of ?hayshed? for the remainder of the day!
All went well?for a while. Murray fell off the lap board a couple of times, and eventually appeared at the back of the pits?minus Alfa. Seems the gearbox had decided five ratios was just too excessive, and had reduced this by a couple, also making it very difficult to select. Tow-in No. 1. Ray took off for his first run, and completed all his sessions without gremlins: seems German cars are sprayed in the factory with ?der pizzoff? gremlin repellent. I followed Ray for my first session and did my best to melt a very ordinary set of tyres in the pursuit of annoyingly fast MX-5s, lumbering Mustangs, the odd Rex and all manner of other means of motoring wallet-sucking. No worries so far. Lachy followed and came in later with the temp gauge making unhappy gestures. A radiator cap was replaced, things checked, but it was later to blow the heater core and retire. The Alfa re-appeared in Glenn?s hands and completed his first session, but making it very clear it was also not happy about it, and ended its day on the trailer in disgrace. Dave took the MG out for his turn at fame and glory, but had the motor tighten on him coming up to Lukey Heights, confirmed by a flagging oil pressure gauge, and shut it down. Tow-in No. 2. I had a second crack at being one of the reliable ones, only to find a developing problem that felt like a deflating tyre but was actually an internal LSD (diff) haemorrhage?.manifesting itself as the car trying to change lanes each time you accelerated or lifted off. Imagine a gear change at 200kph! I recommend this as a suitable prescription-free alternative to Metamucil.
While the MR2 was theoretically driveable, it left us with Lachy (at that stage) and Ray as the only real ?goers,? and later this was reduced to Ray getting his money?s worth in lap numbers and finishing the event for us.
Despite the maladies, we had a good time and, as always, the company was enjoyable and reduced the pangs of defeat. We gathered our impressive collection of bits we had brought along, and went our separate ways to lick wounds and?.who knows?….even perhaps have another go next year.
Thanks to heaps of people, but particularly Tony and off-siders for persisting with the timing; Jane for awesome soup; Jan for excellent spirit-lifting choccy cake; the visitors who rocked up on the day to take an interest in what we did; everyone for their company and camaraderie, and the flaggies and various marshals and officials who put up with a sometimes patience-testing huge mob of people who all wanted their request dealt with first.
Roll on 2015.
-Maudy
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