Newsflash 23/7/2018
Folk,
Please find below a report from Danny Ciarma on our recent round at Morgan Park in July. Great fun as usual.
Noel
Morgan Park is a fantastic track and what a fantastic event the HRCC put on over the weekend. There were just under 300 cars entered and the events still seemed to unfold seamlessly.
The mornings were very cold at -5 deg but the days warmed up to the low twenties, clear blue sky and lots of sun – great weather for racing, cold air and dry track, however very slippery, maybe due to the cold temperatures or the new surface.
The weekend consisted of a qualifying session on sat morning followed by 4 races with the usual Friday practice. The M & O category had around 18 entries with three of them being Formula Juniors – and it was the three Juniors that made the races in this category exciting!
Up the front of the field was a three way battle between Noel Bryen in his Rennmax, Don Thallon in his MRC and me in the Lynx.
Don showed up on Sat morning just before qualifying and first session out posted the fastest lap time of 1:30.506, just in front of Noel Bryen who posted 1:30.653 and then myself at 1:31.124.
In race 1, Don lead all the way with a win posting the fastest time of 1:29.752, closely followed behind by Noel Bryen and then myself third. I don’t have footage of Race 1 as my gopro didn’t switch on, however I have great footage of the next three races, which are below.
In race 2, I managed to get the edge over Noel Bryen in the first turn and followed Don Thallon for the whole race whilst fighting off Noel from behind. To spice up the race, there was Faux Pas racing amongst us with a 2550cc engine capacity, which made for great dicing amongst our juniors. Don again posted the fastest lap time of the race with a 1:29.902.
Below is a link of the onboard footage from my junior – sorry the footage of the three next races is one dimensional given I was the only one with a camera, so you’ll have to just put up looking at me steering.
Noel Bryen got me back in race 3 by pipping me at turn 1. The race got interesting for me when I went too fast into 4 and came off but did a Dukes of Hazard style driving on the dirt to avoid the motor from stalling. Once back on the tar, I then had a lonely race for several laps until I finally caught up with Don, so somewhere along the way Noel managed to take the lead from Don. A couple of cars came off the track in the last and second last turns, which resulted in a localised yellow flag – this created a bit of a bottle neck with the stragglers as the front runners were lapping them. You’ll see on the footage below how Don got held up.
Noel took out first place with the fastest lap time of 1:29.797, Don second and myself third. See link to the footage below.
Race 4 was a fantastic race – the Faux Pas had gone home which left the three juniors to fight it out. Noel kept the lead off the grid into turn 1 but I managed to out pace Don to second place. That’s how the order finished however there was some great dicing along the way between Don and myself and then Noel and myself in the second leg of the race. Im told that the commentator got quite animated with this race calling, and im sure we would have been a great spectacle for the on lookers. I posted the fastest lap time of 1:29.346, which I owe to Jamie Larner for his tireless efforts in tweaking my car to get it to its utmost best. Below is the footage for those who are interested.
The weekend finished with Noel taking out the over all Group M first place, with Don second and myself third.
I try and post footage of most events I run in so please fill free to go to Australian Formula Junior Racing on Youtube to see all of the footage, but im really hoping that most of you get a gopro mounted on your car so that I can splice together the dicing to give those at home a front seat view of the action (and sometimes rear seat).
It was a fantastic weekend of racing and well worth the 16 hours over two days to get there and the same to get home, despite Jamie and I getting lost on a back road somewhere between Stanthorpe and Texas at dusk with hundreds of roos, I mean literally hundreds coming at us like missiles. We had to sit on 60k’s whilst continually tooting the horn for two hours! But it was all worth it. Now I cant wait to do it all again in a few weeks time at the Winton Festival of Speed.
Danny Ciarma
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