Editor’s Note
G’day all.
August was a huge month. For a while there after last months’ newsletter I was wondering what I was going to do to fill the space this time but with the assorted reports here I don’t reckon ‘fluffing it out’ will be an issue. From the working bee to realign the Start/Finish area to the adoption of a couple of Official Policies regarding use of the Club Car and entry to the Pit area, to the 2-day Multiclub event that not only saw racing return to the full track after the previous months’ rain affected Motorkhana but also the debut of the new Start/Finish line with not just 4 cars on track at once but frequently 6, it was all happening!
A huge thanks to the Hulls and associated catering heroes who kept us fed and coffeed over the weekend. You guys rock and we look forward to seeing you again next month for VCAS and the Junior Development Day.
And BE AWARE ALL ENTRANTS!!! Due to the wonderful age of litigation in which we live Swan Hill Sporting Car Club has had to introduce a Pit Pass Policy. Now don’t panic, it won’t cost you anything. But it does mean when you’re filling in your driver/passenger paperwork at the start of the event, you’ll need one more signature to get your Pit Pass wristband and without one of these, you don’t get in to the pits. And if you’re under 14, you just don’t get into the pits, Period. I know it sucks but if someone gets reversed over by a driver with belts and helmet on and no rearward visibility, we get sued, no more racing, and this would SUCK MUCH MORE. So be warned; our resident Pit Bull will be at the gate all weekend checking wristbands and YOU DON’T WANT TO GET CAUGHT IN THE PITS WITHOUT ONE.
We have also nutted out a club policy for use of the club car, since we are currently down to one. There’ll be a copy of it somewhere in this newsletter when I can find somewhere to put it.
And later in the year, November to be precise, we’ll be running a Khanacross demo at the Ouyen Show. This is Staceys’ (other) baby so more details later.
With thanks to Ted, Lynne, Chris and all other contributors, here’s how the last race meet went…
Officials Perspective August 8thand 9th2015.
Our track for the July meeting was basically a pool of water, so with the thought of keeping the show on the road we went up on the hill out of the wet. After some discussion a single track was marked out with the stop paddock one side of the temporary pits and the start paddock on the other side.
After a bit of a shaky start we were under way and it worked very well. Just about at all times, two cars were easily able to be accommodated. So with that experience under our belts it was thought, what about if we could do the same on our existing track,i.e.separate the stop and start areas. Maybe we could handle more cars?
With our well attended working bee, alendofCoburns’grader, hire of chain digger and rearrangingofa few– alright a lot of -tyres we were ready.
So, on SaturdayAugust 8thwe started off tentatively getting two cars going on each track. John Schellens and I agreed that we should build up to it. Within an hour we managed our first time ever running three cars on each track. From then on it seemed easy. Because itwas all going so quickly, the staging person and the timer need assistance. With three cars on each trackthe staging person is calling in numbers about every forty seconds. After a number of hours on my own, instead of saying Lane 1, car 14, I was saying Lane 14, car 1! It was much better when there was someone else there to take a turn. Sometimes I let the cars go across the track a bit late or they dawdled and had to wait for the finishing cars. It seems that once the competing cars have gone over or under the bridge it is too late to send the cars across the track.
David Johns was our CAMS provided Steward and he made a few suggestions. We have thought we may be able to stack up another pair of cars behind the cars on the start line.
Sunday went just as well and with less cars, it was almost drive in off the track and get directed straight out again without stopping.
There were a number of new things we tried this weekend. Numbers were one of them. A great idea, easy for the staging marshal and easy for the timers.
Anyway, we will review our performance and fine tune if we can but first thoughts are that it worked brilliantly with little stress on any officials.
Ted Paynter
From the Timing Crew
As the assistant race timer I would just like to start off by saying that the new start lines are great. We can now have up to six or more cars on the track at oncegiving driversmore track time. This keepsusbusy, but with a lot less stress.
The new caution lights have been great so far and I can’t wait to see more of them around the track,as this makes the track safer for other drivers already out there.
Interestinglyone of the chequered flagsslipped down the rope during the dayand was flapping around over the finishing sensor causing it totrigger falsely.
John will now have his work cut out for himto makechanges totheTrackMasterprogramin order to:
· Allow personalised numbers to be stored in the main database so we don’t have to constantly type them in for every event.
· Embed the code for the new caution lights into theTrackMasterprogram so we don’t need a separate controlfor them.
· Either adding more columns orautomaticallydeleting slower times Usually we set up the finishing sensors the night before an event because they are much easier to align in the dark.This time however we could not get one sensor to respond.On further inspection it turned out that one of the wires inside the sensor had come out.Thiswas soon fixed and the sensor was soon up and runningagain.
CindyBrunning
From the Catering Crew.
Just a quick few words from the catering tent. We had two big days of catering. Weather was not too bad; not much wind to bother our tent.The pies, pasties and sausage rolls were a hit, something new as well as Dawn Alexander’s lamingtons and muffins.Neil Albert – I hope you enjoyed them on Sunday when you were at work!
Linda Trotter was a big help on Saturday as we were pretty busy. We appreciated the extra help.
Greg Hull on thebbq. ‘Good job Greg’. Soups were tasty. Thanks to all who made them. TanyaMcGillvray’svegiesoup and TomPaynter’spumpkin soup went down a treat.
Thanks Ted Paynter for organising the shower. Just wonderful!
A big thank you to theMcGillvrayfamily for donating the pie warmer and steamer for the dimsimsat the weekend.
Cheers,
Donna Hull.
President Report August 8th and 9th
What a weekend and how proud should the members of SHSCC be, we really turned one on. Catering a huge selection of fantastic food, a new start line allowing huge numbers of runs by anyone who wanted to do them, and even beyond our expectations we easily and safely ran 3 in each lane all day. It was harder to keep a queue in the lanes than it was to run them and it was much easier on our officials who really felt an ease of operation.
Spectators (you know the ones we never had?), the car park was 3 deep on Sunday and they were entertained by the number of cars we could put through, the general chatter was “this is fantastic and we loved it”.
We gained at least one new member on the day and there are 2 more coming out next month to join in, that is 3 new cars to the grid and we need them to be able to take a breath. Adam Smith and myself as well as Kevin Jobling and Rob Field went head to head, only changing from Lane 1 to Lane 2 for just under a hour and I can tell you none of us were holding back, you would have thought sheep stations were on the line.
I can say that was some of the best fun I have had in a long time and by the end we were totally spent, it was 1.45pm and we were toast! Got home and collapsed, how the hell do they do Bathurst? Rob and Greg Field who came up from Melbourne must have thought they were driving back to Perth, must have been tired when they got home but I bet they are still smiling thinking of it. They’re last words were “we will be back in November” and I hope so, great guys loved the runs against you.
Now a BIG THANK YOU to all that made this happen. You know you do not just turn up, unlock the gate and this sort of weekend just happens, it is lots of work to get the track ready. The thing was flooded 2 months back and more water and rain kept it wet but with tractor work and rolling, more tractor work and more rolling it was great. Same for the setting up of catering, timing lights, bins, fire wood, tyres, and bollard fencing, there were people putting in hard throughout the week leading up to it. Then the running on the day, Time Keepers, Marshals and Club Chief to run it, an Event Secretary to stress out with your paper work, even a couple who were sent up by Cams as Chief Steward from Geelong and so on and if I missed any it is not intentional THANK YOU.
We did have one unfortunate problem; we have been battling the exposure to liability of people in the pit area and came up with the solution of using a form to cover liability to enter the pits, accompanied by a green wrist band to show you where compliant. We are aiming to keep children out of harm’s way as a driver with helmet on and belts done up does not have a lot of side vision when moving around the pit area. We covered it at the drivers briefing but as this was the first time we had done it we did not have signs up and not all were aware. Anyway this did cause some bones of contention and we will work hard to smooth them out. We did sign the entries in on the Sunday.
I am hoping to talk with all involved and make this system fair and simple for all but it was not the intent of the club to upset anybody and we would hate to do so. We will be talking about it at our next general meeting, if you have anything to add to that please let me know. .
Race Report August 8th and 9th
Here are the Saturday results and as we are not allowed to publish times on Test and Tune days, no numbers only places here but if you want track data email me and I can send it to you.
If you are wondering how scoring works you need to have completed 2 laps in each lane to get a result so the people at the end of the list must not have managed to get 2 laps in each lane for whatever reason (2 clutches and a motor)..?
Sort by overall
Number / First Name / Last Name / Class / Vehicle / Colour / By Class / Overall17 / Chris / Gibson / E / Mitsubishi Lancer / Black / 1 / 1
99 / Adam / Smith / E / Ford Falcon Ute / Blue / 2 / 2
11 / Greg / Field / E / Nissan Bluebird / Black / 1 / 3
9 / Robert / Field / E / Nissan Bluebird / Black / 2 / 4
2 / Kelvin / Jobling / E / Holden Commodore / White / 3 / 5
420 / Darby / Anderson / D / Mitsubishi Lancer / Blue / 3 / 6
64 / Barry / Middleton / D / Mitsubishi Lancer / Blue / 4 / 7
53 / Neil / Albert / P / Hyundai Excel / Blue / 1 / 8
8 / Jack / Hawkins / C / Hyundai Excel / Silver / 1 / 9
888 / Colin / O'Brien / D / Holden Commodore VN / Red / 5 / 10
4 / Tyson / Buckley / J / Ford Telstar / Green / 1 / 11
12 / Daniel / McDonald / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Green / 2 / 12
13 / Rob / King-Gee / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver / 3 / 13
40 / Neil / Donnan / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver / 4 / 14
21 / Glenn / McGillray / C / Hyundai Excel / Silver / 2 / 15
88 / Liam / Carmichael / J / Holden Commodore VS / White / 2 / 16
666 / Ross / Trotter / E / Holden Commodore / Maroon/White / 4 / 17
18 / Kelsey / Trotter / L / Toyota Sedan / Red/White / 1 / 18
3 / Stephen / Barr / J / Mitsubishi Sigma / Red / 3 / 19
5 / Daniel / Campbell / J / Holden Commodore / White
15 / Rodney / Stevenson / P / Mazda Sedan / Maroon/Yellow
10 / Glen / King-Gee / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver
Sort by class
Number / First Name / Last Name / Class / Vehicle / Colour / By Class / Overall17 / Chris / Gibson / E / Mitsubishi Lancer / Black / 1 / 1
11 / Greg / Field / E / Nissan Bluebird / Black / 1 / 3
53 / Neil / Albert / P / Hyundai Excel / Blue / 1 / 8
8 / Jack / Hawkins / C / Hyundai Excel / Silver / 1 / 9
4 / Tyson / Buckley / J / Ford Telstar / Green / 1 / 11
18 / Kelsey / Trotter / L / Toyota Sedan / Red/White / 1 / 18
99 / Adam / Smith / E / Ford Falcon Ute / Blue / 2 / 2
9 / Robert / Field / E / Nissan Bluebird / Black / 2 / 4
12 / Daniel / McDonald / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Green / 2 / 12
21 / Glenn / McGillray / C / Hyundai Excel / Silver / 2 / 15
88 / Liam / Carmichael / J / Holden Commodore VS / White / 2 / 16
2 / Kelvin / Jobling / E / Holden Commodore / White / 3 / 5
420 / Darby / Anderson / D / Mitsubishi Lancer / Blue / 3 / 6
13 / Rob / King-Gee / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver / 3 / 13
3 / Stephen / Barr / J / Mitsubishi Sigma / Red / 3 / 19
64 / Barry / Middleton / D / Mitsubishi Lancer / Blue / 4 / 7
40 / Neil / Donnan / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver / 4 / 14
666 / Ross / Trotter / E / Holden Commodore / Maroon/White / 4 / 17
888 / Colin / O'Brien / D / Holden Commodore VN / Red / 5 / 10
5 / Daniel / Campbell / J / Holden Commodore / White
15 / Rodney / Stevenson / P / Mazda Sedan / Maroon/Yellow
10 / Glen / King-Gee / P / Mitsubishi Lancer / Silver
A good range of entries across the classes here and well done Neil Albert leading a large field of Class P in the WRC weapon, see Facebook if you are not sure why I called it that. Jack Hawkins continues to impress in his Hundi and I have it on good authority that a 2 car team is on the go in that household (looking forward to that Glenn), and Neil the Lancer invasion could be being met by Hyundai soon. Tyson Buckley also had a great day and drove very well, good on you Tyson it is great to see young drivers doing a mature job behind the wheel. Looking through the photos of the weekend shows that for the most part cars are finding race lines and keeping it on the track, the field is looking very impressive overall and got to say loving it.