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Event Wrap: 2014 CAMS Supersprint Championship Round 2

Round Two of the NSW CAMS Supersprint Championship on May 10th was run at Sydney Motorsport Park. The day started out foggy, and with a westerly breeze bringing in smokey conditions from the Blue Mountains hazard reduction burn.
This year CAMS NSW Supersprint organisers have found themselves with an enviable dilemma. The sport has grown in popularity to the extent that recent events have been fully subscribed. As well, this year it is only a seven event championship, not the usual eight rounds, due to track scheduling constraints. This has meant that they have had to institute a wait list for potential competitors wishing to gain entry to each event. Of course, not wishing to turn anyone away from enjoying the sport, organisers are however bound by track safety regulations.
Dennis Pietrobon, who was lucky enough to move from wait list to competition status, is a newcomer to the sport and is thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to test his skills in his Nissan Skyline.
It was great to see Kerry Redfern, president of the Manly-Warringah Sporting Car Club back at the track with his sense of humour. Following recent double bypass surgery, he is some time away from competition but was lending support to Robert Muir with the unveiling of their new “baby”, a Honda Type R which has been under construction for over a year. Apparently there is a another “under construction” vehicle coming out of the stables of the MWSCC, which will be seen in upcoming rounds. Stay tuned!
Garry Williams (1969 MGB) had a head shaking moment after his second pass of the day. Looking at his stats he found that his first “easy” run clocked him two seconds faster than his previous personal best yet he felt that his second run was quicker. Young Kyle Jackson pushed his personal limits and was having a day to forget as he spun twice in one session, and ended up in the kitty litter in another. Race control felt it necessary to have a chat.
Roger Heard’s usually smooth confident racing line received a nervous disruption late in the day as he dropped a 150m line of a slippery substance which caused him to do a couple 360 degree spins on turn four. In a spectacular cloud of smoke, Roger was almost completely obscured from view, which helped to cover his embarrassment. Later in the day, Roger commented that“…that was enough excitement for one day.”
One not so lucky to make it through the day was Jonathon McKinnon (Nissan 200SX) who sheered 6 head studs in the first session and headed to the showers early. Nice to see Supersprint veteran Luke Petrou (Datsun 260Z) with a new flashy livery this year. A large Gold foil checkerboard square pattern adorning both rear quarter panel sections. Looks great… is this Luke’s new strategy? Blind the competition?
Lap records were the biggest casualty of the day. Four out of seven Type records were broken, and a total of eleven class records fell.
In fear of repeating ourselves, Andrie Tan continues to grow his talent as he broke Type 5 and Class 5D records as well as being the only one to record a sub 1:30 sec time. Kim Tai was the fastest tin top of the day, shattering the Class 6D record by an amazing 10 seconds. Go Kim!
A cadre of Porsches who usually compete in their own competition came to up the ante in the Type 2/Class 2C category. Warwick Morris broke both the records with a time of 1:42.66 in his GT3. Warwick broke the record in this category at Wakefield in the first round. He is one to watch!
It should be mentioned that two other Porsches in the same category also broke the record. Here come the Porsches, boys!
Allan Marin broke Robert Kolimackovski’s record in Type 3 Class 3D. This might entice Robert back sooner than planned, as he is having a self-professed “gap year” this year. Jason O’Meara had a sweet victory today as he broke the 6-year mark of Benny Tran in class 3A with a 1:50.57 in his Honda 1600. Preston Peiris continues to break records with a 1:55 in class 1C. Adam Laura broke the Class 4C record in his beautifully prepared BMW M3 with a 1.39.82. Adam broke Tom Ainsworth’s old record by almost a second but Tom was nipping at Adam’s heels yesterday and was just over
1/10th of a second behind him. This was unfortunate as Tom also ran a sub 1.40 time also but it was just not good enough on the day.
Marek Tomaszewski lost one of his old records yesterday but came up with a new one in Class 5C by shaving over 10 seconds of the old
record. Again both Duncan Forrest and Al Palmer also shattered the old record with times of 1.30.900 and 1.35.712 respectively. Unfortunately only
Marek’s time will go into the Record Book. Chris Kostakis broke his own Class 5B record in his MNR Votrx with a great time of 1.37.90 and Blake Jones set a new Class 6A record in his Mitsubishi R-Colt with a time of 1.50.30.
ARDC still leads the Club Championship on 829 points just ahead of MX5 who are on 814 points. However, MX5 outscored ARDC on ARDC’s home turf by scoring 477 points to ARDC’s 437 on the day. Early days yet but it looks like third place will come from either Manly Warringah, HSV or the Clubman Drivers Club. Manly Warringah hold down a slim margin for 3rd place at the moment. At the conclusion of the days competition, the annual NSW CAMS Supersprint Championship presentation of the 2013 year trophies was held in The Garage.
President Mike Hicks conducted the official award presentations and a very healthy representation of the award recipients and supporters were on hand to receive their well earned trophies. Andrie Tan was presented with his NSW and Australian Supersprint Championship Trophies with his state and national special achievements from last year gaining special mention. Also singled out for notable mentioning was Kerry Butcher for his hard work and dedication.
– Words and pictures by Rob Annesley

 

Event Wrap: Sydney Retro Speedfest

HSRCA RELEASE: Held over the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of May, 2014, the inaugural Sydney Retro Speedfest was a huge success, putting on an excellent weekend of historic racing and a brilliant event for an impressive crowd of historic motorsport fans.

Practice kicked off on Friday, with the impressive field of historic sports and racing cars gathering at Sydney Motorsport Park and entrants settling in, catching up with friends, preparing machinery and putting in a few sighting runs around the circuit.

When the event proper kicked off on Saturday morning we were greeted by cold and rain, which produced some tricky conditions for drivers. Thankfully the weather turned around for Sunday and we were rewarded with a warm and sunny day for spectators and great conditions for racing.

The quality of racing was, as usual, excellent – especially in Saturday’s tricky conditions.

Sunday saw a few racing incidents and technical malfunctions interrupt proceedings, but overall the event ran smoothly thanks to the tireless efforts of our volunteers and courteous driving from entrants, and drivers kept everyone entertained throughout the weekend with back-to-back events that had the track buzzing throughout both days.

We’d like to thank all of our entrants for your safe and responsible driving, the endless hours of work that go into preparing, maintaining and racing your cars and for getting involved!

Historic motorsport offers unrivalled access to the pits and paddock, and the cars and drivers that fill them, and Sydney Retro Speedfest was no exception to this!

This weekend saw the entirety of Sydney Motorsport Park filled with immaculately-prepared historic racing and sports cars of all kinds, much to the joy of everyone involved. The event attracted some unusual and very special machinery from the past eight decades of motorsport history, often with a friendly owner/driver nearby ready for a chat, and it’s lovely to see these cars at a racetrack, enjoy them being tinkered with, maintained, repaired and prepared, and experience them at full-tilt.

The great selection of machinery and friendly, buzzy atmosphere made the pits and paddock a pleasure to explore and chat one’s way through, and we’d like to thank everyone for making this the case!

Most importantly we, and I’m sure everyone involved, would like to send our most sincere and heartfelt thanks to the many selfless and tireless volunteers who apply their skills, energy, time and love to our events. Without you there would be no historic motorsport, and we can’t thank you enough. THANK YOU!

We would also like to send our congratulations to Randall Bezuidenhout, who won the “Win a Hot Lap at the Sydney Retro Speedfest” competition conducted on Radio 2GB’s Sportzone program. Randall collected four weekend entry tickets to the Speedfest, four Sydney Motorsport Park caps, and scored a hot lap in a Porsche 911 racecar.”

Ferrari Racing Days Sydney hailed a success

For three days, Sydney has been awash with a sea of red as the first ever Ferrari Racing Days to be held in Australia commanded the attention of the city. Thousands of people travelled from across the country to experience the three-day festival, held at the iconic Sydney Motorsport Park, the home of motor sport in Sydney.

Saturday morning however marked the true foray into the festivities, as a cavalcade of 150 Ferrari’s travelled en masse from Glebe Island, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge onto the Sydney Motorsport Park. Marking the official kick off to Australia’s first Ferrari Racing Days, the largest gathering of Ferrari’s in Australia ever, the cavalcade totaled an impressive $70 million worth of new and classic Ferrari’s.

On-track, visitors saw Max Blancardi take the top podium spot on Saturday and Sunday for the Pirelli Pro classification, while Philippe Prette took the honours in the Pirelli classification for experienced drivers and David Tjiptobiantoro took first place in the Coppa Shell race for newcomers for both races.

While the first-ever leg of the Ferrari Asia Pacific Challenge was a key highlight of the weekend, one of the stand out moments was when the Ferrari F1 car took to the track with F1 test driver Marc Gene behind the wheel. Gene commanded the full attention of thousands when he reached over 300km/h on a flying lap.

Throughout the weekend visitors on-site were treated to the full ‘Festival of Ferrari’ with five showroom spaces in full operation, with Ferrari fans taking in the Supercar Chronicles and Classiche displays, featuring the stunning LaFerrari and the $5 Million 166MM. The kids were buzzing as they experienced an array of Ferrari opportunities including the ‘Podium Finish’ picture stand in the F1 Kids Zone and a chance to get behind the virtual wheel, with the F1 simulators kept busy all weekend.

 

PCRA Round 2 Event Wrap, April 6 2014

Sunday April 6th was Round 2 of the PCRA (NSW) annual motorcycle championships. Sydney Motorsport Park hosted this round on the South Circuit, utilising the new 800mtr track addition with it sweeping bends and undulating elevations. It truly is a spectacular addition to the circuit, and provided excitement and many challenges for the riders.
Early on in the morning session the weather was coolish but mainly cloudy with sunny breaks. It looked like a great day of dry racing. This unfortunately was shortlived, as by 10:30am it was sporadically raining, which built to a steady downpour by mid afternoon.
The healthy field of 96 entrants got underway on time, and the morning session saw some very quick times. In the New Era 125cc class, Leanne Nelson and Edward Marsden shared the two race wins, both on Honda 125’s. Marsden had an exceptional run in race two, as the weather closed in he created a new lap record of 1:19:94.

In the Motorlites/Superlites 80-200cc Tyler Bradford and Anthony Marsden each took a race win, both of them breaking lap records with Bradford holding on for a second place in the second race and bettering his earlier lap record as well. A good effort and valuable points towards his championship aspirations.

Wade Lewis in the Pre-Modern F2 class on a CBR600 set a lap record in his first race win ( 1:13:66) and went on in awful weather conditions to better it by 2.3sec with a 1:11:32 in his second race win. Incredible!!

Troy Galvin rode his ZXR750 to back to back race wins in the P6 750cc races. Sitting in fifth place in the championship, after two 5th places in Round 1, these wins will catapault him up the rankings. No lap record, but 2 sec in front of his nearest competitor, gave him some nice breathing space on a slippery track. Troy’s plan was obviously to set a pace out front, and let the field make its mistakes trying to chase him down. It worked a treat for him.
Bob Garner in the P4 350-500cc class, won all three of his races, in the only category to complete all three of its scheduled races.

This was due to the fact that as the afternoon wore on the rain bucketed down bringing strong gusting winds with it and at one stage was so strong that it actually blew a bike over.

The event continued and at the height of the storm one rider was heard to exclaim ”…oh yeah, that’d be right, its my race!” By 4pm however, the track had water streaming across itand race organizers called a riders briefing. When the conditions were explained to the assembled riders a vote was taken and the meeting was officially ended after race 15.

– Words and pictures by Rob Annesley
look@shotbyrob.com.au

The 2014 Barry Sheene Festival of Speed

The ninth Annual Barry Sheene Festival of Speed was held at Sydney Motorsport Park on March 21st-23rd. Three sensational days of motorcycle racing were held under cloudy but dry skies, albeit at times very warm temperatures.
Featuring both International and Australian motorcycling stars, both old and new, who all came together to celebrate a life cut short, and to honour Barry Sheene’s memory and his love of motorcycling in the spirit of fun, friendship and rivalry. Just the way Barry enjoyed his beloved sport.
A healthy cohort of international riders, teams and personalities were in attendance. Scout Fletcher (NZ) joined Maria Costello (UK) as they came to battle with our very own Leanne Nelson, who edged the other two ladies back into third and fourth place respectively in the P6 125cc class. Leanne saw off the other two ladies challenge with the second highest points score for the weekend with 114 points. Congratulations to Jason Dunn taking first with 119 pts.
The Kiwi’s brought over a large contingent to contest Leg #1 of the Trans Tasman Challenge, with high hopes of retaining their hold on the TTChallenge Cup. For the first time racing in Australia two of Japans’s leading domestic racers Yugi Terada and Tomiki Adachi are riding in the P5 Unlimited class.
As expected some spirited racing dogfights were eagerly awaited, none more anticipated than the contest between Cameron Donald and Mike Dibb on their 1100cc machines. With nary a tyre diameter between them all day, they swapped race wins over the weekend, until finally Dibb (119 pts) took a 3-2 race win lead, edging out Donald (116 pts), with Mizzi (87 pts) and Japans’ Adachi ( 71pts) rounding out the 30 field.
In Formula 2 Sidecar racing, Beare Boys Racing (Aus) combo of Dwight and Noel Beare, were simply unbeatable, taking a clean sweep of both the Australian F2 three race series, as well as the two Trans Tasman races. Noel was excited saying “… this is the best result we could hope for and gives us the confidence we need to fair well at our upcoming assault on the Isle of Man TT F2 sidecar race meeting in May/June.”
A very good crowd attended the BSFoS three-day race meeting and gave strong encouragement to the 250 racing entrants. One of the drawcards on the program for the crowd, was the three-lap Parade on Sunday, available for spectators to ride their bikes around the 3.9km circuit, an honour that few have the opportunity to do, especially in the company of such international luminaries as Phil Read who led the parade.
– Words and pictures by Rob Annesley
look@shotbyrob.com.au

 

Ricciardo smashes lap record at Top Gear Festival Sydney

Saturday 8 March 2014, SYDNEY: Formula One™ star Daniel Ricciardo didn’t disappoint the crowds at the first day of Top Gear Festival Sydney when he smashed the previous lap record from the 2013 Festival on his first attempt.

An annual crowd favorite, the young Australian driver made plenty of new fans today, including Top Gear’s presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May, when he blitzed the lap record attempt. In the beautiful Sydney sunshine, Top Gear Festival host Jeremy Clarkson, was almost lost for words, but not quite: “That was almost unbelievable. You climbed into a car you don’t know, tyres you don’t understand, on a track you’ve never been to and took a couple of milliseconds off the lap record. That was an astonishing time!” A beaming Ricciardo clocked up 1:13:08 beating Mark Webber’s previous record of 1:13:6060 and was heard to ask “What was it?” as he climbed out of his Infiniti Red Bull Racing car.

Clarkson and May proceeded to ask Ricciardo about his win and the upcoming Formula One season, to which Ricciardo responded, “It’s great to get the lap record on the first day and give the crowd a good show. It’s awesome to be back in Australia.” “Feeding off the adrenaline from the Top Gear Festival Sydney, I’m really looking forward to racing in front of the home crowd in Melbourne next weekend,” Daniel said. Ricciardo will see if he can improve upon his own time again tomorrow, so fans should get out to Sydney Motorsport Park to see Perth-born Daniel, our new Formula One Aussie hope, in action.