Newsflash 10/9/2018

Written by afja-admin on 10 September 2018. Posted in News

Folk,

I was recently reminded that AFJA news has been a bit thin on the ground in recent times, so this is a catch up on recent happenings and a reminder of what lies ahead for 2018. 

The most recent event was held on the Winton long circuit during August and was conspicuous for the usual wet weather.  Fortunately for me, work commitments prevented my attendance for Friday practice, as it rained all day and would have been a waste of effort. 

Saturday morning wasn’t much better and qualifying was still wet.  I hadn’t raced there for nearly 20 years and spent the first couple of laps remembering the scenery and managed to spin on what would have been my flying lap.  After sloshing out of the mud I managed to get going again only to be presented with red flags as a result of Peter Strauss putting his Brabham Climax into the Armco at turn one.  As a result, I qualified on the third row beside Danny Ciarma.  We were the only 2 Juniors to qualify, although it was great to see Murray Bryden start in the first race at the rear of the grid in his Lotus 20.  Fortunately for Peter Strauss, Jamie Larner was in attendance and managed to repair the rear suspension on the Brabham so that Peter could have some fun for the remainder of the weekend.

Our first race was dry and I made a good start, managing to out drag Danny on the outside to the first corner.  Unfortunately for Danny, he locked up his fronts under braking, had nowhere to go on the inside and climbed over my left rear, launching his car over my roll bar with all 4 wheels off the ground.  He landed on the front right, completely demolishing the corner, and so he was out for the weekend as a result.  I sustained some minor body damage but was able to continue.  Fortunately, neither of us was hurt and I now have lots of faith in my roll bar!!  Murray came through from the rear and took maximum points for the race.

In the second race Murray had a DNF and didn’t compete in the last race so I can only imagine he was struck by gremlins of some sort.  So, it was a quiet weekend from the FJ perspective, although I had some fun and enjoyed racing at Winton again after such a long break.  Strangely enough, the motel we stayed in still had my old contact details in their system from 20 years ago. I couldn’t remember staying there – it was just a coincidence that I booked it.  Small world!

Our next event is on the weekend of 22/23 September at Wakefield Park and is shaping up to be a good event.  So far we have myself, Danny Ciarma (Jamie must have worked overtime to rebuild his car), Bill Hemming, Alan Conway, Jeff Brown, Jamie Larner and Rob Buckley.  There is still plenty of room and the HSRCA will happily accept late entries (Robyn is involved in the acceptance process) so come along and have some fun.  After Wakefield we have Sandown Park on November 10/11 and finally Eastern Creek (aka SMSP) on December 1 and 2. 

The current point score looks like this:

Catch you at the next one.

Regards,

Noel Bryen

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