The wonderful Wizard of Aus!
The day started early for myself and my travelling companions. We made good time on the Bruce highway and were at the venue well before time, catching the ‘Egg’ taking forty winks! Casually we set about running a few models but the main attraction at this time was the ‘Egg-lotto’ . Living near the sea, Egg is budgeting for a new ‘tinnie’. This, for the benefit for our overseas readers, is an alloy boat about four metres or more which has the primary function of conveying the occupant(s) to sometimes random and some times predetermined areas of water where the occupant(s) can then demonstrate their piscatorial prowess in an attempt to extricate such befinned denizens of the not so deep with ulterior designs on a traditional fish supper…………… or not!
So, some of Eggy’s much loved, but surplus models were ‘up for grabs’. A simple technique which involved attendees writing their name and model of choice on a slip of paper. If they fancied more than one model then they completed more than one slip. A little while later, the slips were removed from the hat one at a time. First names out got the model of their choice at the marked price. Some of us were lucky and scored a couple and one unlucky person must of ended up with at least four or five!!
No matter, with eleven racers in attendance, the scene set for a good afternoon’s racing and the first class was Group 1 Rally, open to models powered by either the Ninco NC1 or NC8 motor. Norm kicked the pace off with a 7 second dead lap and although I thought the quickest lap would be a couple of tenths faster, it was not going to come easily. Marshalling was light and the drivers were really quite well behaved. None of their usual turmoil and successive heats were a pleasure to watch. I managed a 6.76 second lap in heat three but I’m not too sure how as I was still a bit drowsy. Paul and Glen were hotting the pace up but Paul’s car was running on the edge and it was skilful driving which kept him with the pack. At heat six Bob was a bit concerned that he hadn’t raced yet. A check of the running list showed him to be missing so that race was abandoned. The race distance was reset for twenty laps and a new race with Bob in was rescheduled. But we won’t go there!!
The preliminaries must have cleaned the track up as nearly all the front runners were now doing 6.9’s!! That meant I would have to run flat out now! The Group B drivers were having their own competition and apart from Egg who enjoyed home track advantage, the rest were having some good result.
Race 1 Group 1 Rally 20 laps Position Group B Driver Race time 1. Phil 9’31.329†2. Paul 9’42.500†3. Glen 9’56.470" 4. 1. Eggy 5. Norm 6. 2. Jordan 7. Kev 8. Alan 9. 3. Ken 10. 4. Bob 11. 5. Peter
Next event was the first ‘fast’ one. This was Group 5/Sports sedans. You know! The ones with the big rear tyres! This was a foregone conclusion as Paul’s Fly engined MRRC Toyota is unassailable. It was just left to decide what the placings were. After running a few of the heats the field panned out. Once again Norm looked to be amongst the front runners but was dogged by multiple deslots. None the less, he kept up a scorching pace which was enough to earn him second place.
Jordan was blessed with the luck of the Irish a few weeks early. An earlier heat saw him struggling with his model and a rapid change of controllers cured nothing and not long after, a rapid change of models seemed to effect a solution, but alas, it left him with a lot to catch up time wise but a valiant effort all the same. In heat nine there was a lot of marshalling for all the drivers and as my Lancia Beta Montecarlo was slipping and sliding on rubber, the rest of the pack was strung out on the lap in front. Then came a three car pile up on the last turn of lap nine which gave me an opportunity to drive by and just hold the lead to the heat’s end. I felt a bit like the Olympic ice skater who was running at the back only to have everyone in front of him fall over each other!
There were some nice models in this race too. The Fly BMW’s proved not to be dominant on this occasion and no doubt we will see them on the track again. Other models in the pack were some nice Lancia Betas, Glen drove what I think was a very nice and well behaved Carrera 935 and some good performances from a Ferrari 512, MRRC Toyotas and a couple of Fly BMW CSL’s.
Race 2 Sports Sedans 27 laps 1. Paul 12’ 30.140†2. Norm 13' 00.063†3. 1. Eggy 13' 00.124†4. Phil 5. Kev 6. Glen 7. 2. Ken 8. Alan 9. 3. Jordan 10. 4. Bob 11. 5. Peter
The last event for the evening was make specific and it was to be Slot.it. At this stage Q32 are still defining this class but with the steady flow of new models it looks set to split down a modern / classic divide. In this case most cars were the classic Le Mans period and 962, LC2 Lancias and Jaguars were the bulk of the field. Bob even raced a Scaleauto Toyota GT 1 on the premise it looked like a Slot.it!! Well done Bob.
Once again Paul went off on his own race which left the rest of us to battle it out. I struggled a bit with some unhelpful tyres and Egg was besotted with Alan’s Jagermeister 956 and wondered how he could bare to put it on the track! Well, a few heats later, Alan took straight two at a phenomenal speed, model either in or out of control. Where, at the end, it leapt the crash barrier and landed tail first on a hard tiled floor! (Gulp!). But alas, the model severed its rear wing pylon and the model looked decidedly second hand on its recovery. I’m not too sure, but the Eggmeister went a whiter shade of pale on the news!
The evening drew on and we were treated to a DVD of some decidedly sixties entertainment, inclusive of Karen Carpenter playing the drums and the Bee Gee’s before there voices had broken. This must have helped us get through the gruelling task of the Slot.it races. The highlight of which were the gut wrenching ‘CRACK’s of plastic on plastic as marshall after marshall was one hundredth of a second too slow!! No matter. My LC2 Lost a glued wing in practice and the door mirrors had been removed from new so there wasn’t a lot left to break!
Once again, the group B drivers, and Kev’s struggle amongst them, was more entertaining to watch. Extra points must go to Bob for finishing four places off the bottom. Well done Bob! Last up, the computer spat the results yet again and it went like this
Race 3 Slot.it 27 laps 1. Paul 10’ 59.218†2. Glen 11’ 11.656†3. Phil 11’ 14.906†4. Norm 5. 1. Jordan 6. 2. Egg 7. Alan 8. 3. Bob 9. Kev 10. 4. Peter 11. 5. Ken
