Morgan Park - Prod sports 1 Hour Enduro 25/26th September

[PZG302]

A call for help and a great day out at a race meeting that leaves the V8 Supertaxis for dead in terms of racing and variety.

 

On the 25/26th Spetember at Warwick's Morgan Park raceway there will be a car and bike race meeting.

 

Categories include:

• 5 classes of bikes
  
• Group 2C supersports cars
  
• Group 2B abd 2F Production sports cars
  
• Historic racing and sports cars

[*]Group N historic Touring cars

 

The 2B and 2F prod sports cars will be contesting round 3 of the Cue Enduro Series.

 

Myself and dat2kman will be taking on the Euro Trash and Hairdressers in my freshly refurbished 240Z. After a successful shakedown at QR we are ready to upset the apple cart and show how competitive a 35 year old car can be.

 

This is where we need some help. The one hour race includes a driver swap and we need a couple of helpers on sunday, a car controller and  someone to help throw one driver out of the car and stuff the other one in it. In return the first two volunteers will get free entry for the race meeting, to watch a great day's racing with a huge variety of cars and bikes running around and to also be involved in the one hour race as well as watching all the action from the pit lane.

 

I may be able to get some more tickets for the Sunday, but for $20 for a full day's racing how can you complain??

 

Lets show the Prod sports guys that a Zed is still a force to be reckoned with against all these modern cars, except the $300,000 exotics that may or may not make the trip from Sydney, and if they do, lets hope they break down on the day

[260DET]

Good luck with this, I was at MP doing some pit molling a couple of weekends ago

[Aaron Neubauer]

I assume you'll running on the extended track?

 

It's a pity it falls on the same weekend at the Jap Nationals at Lakeside  :'(

[PZG302]

Yep, on the new extended track.

 

The car has now got a new fuel system ready to go so it should get through the hour with the standard 60 litre tank in the back. Hopefully the economy isn't too bad, the engine flows just under 2.5 litres per minute on the fuel intake, so hopefully half will be returning to the tank. Should be Ok as I used to use a litre a lap around EC with times around the 1:50 mark.

[Aaron Neubauer]

What were the results for the weekend?

[PZG302]

An interesting weekend up at Warwick.

 

First up, the track..... The new extension is awesome, well the whole track is a brilliant thing. For my first time up there I had a ball and I really do like the track. It is a good mix of slow and fast corners and works you and the car well.

 

On friday we arrived at lunch time and had to wait to go out after the bikes. Unfortunately the amount of rain that dumped on Morgan Park was enough to cancell Friday, so saturday's qualifying would be the first time out for me.

 

On saturday I had my 15 minute session in pretty wet conditions. I ended up qualifying 32nd out of 34 witha 2:08, but more importantly saw which way the track went and got comfortable in the car again and didn't hit anything or anyone, which couldn't be said for plenty of others.

 

Jason had his qualifying session about an hour or so later in pretty similar conditions. He was able to slither and slide around to a best of 1:56 to qualify 22nd from 26.

 

After qualifying Jason commandeered a tyre groover and went to work on the Toyo's with the weather still looking dodgy for the afternoon, but the rain sort of holding off.

 

For my race on Saturday arvo, conditions were better, no rain but still a reasonably wet track. A couple of runners went for slicks but we stayed with the wets on. In a couple of laps I went from 32nd to 23rd and a best time of 1:43 before the brake pedal went to the floor and I had to throw the car away in turn 1, thankfully I didn't hit anyone and no one hit me, after another excursion at gum tree I parked the car with a  DNF.

 

The pedal came back for Jason's run, but the pads were shot with no retardation, so it was pretty nerve wracking for me to sit and watch Jason go around. Jason did really well out on the slicks on a still slippery track getting a best time of 1:42.8 and finishing 20th, up from 26th.

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Jason pulling brakes apart, swearing and getting some old pads to fit as well as flushing the brake fluid to replace with something more suitable for the track, ie penrite Sin. After topping up with fuel there was nothing left to do but go to dinner.

 

Sunday dawned foggy with the prospect of another damp day. By the time we got out to the track the weather had settled into overcast with no rain, so the slicks were fitted.

 

My instructions from Jason for the warm up was get out early get as much track time as possible and get the brakes hot to the point of fading if possible. Went out and tried to do all that. staying out of everyone's way braking heavily from the start finish line into turn one to get the brakes hot I managed a time of 1:41, so pretty happy with that.

 

For the enduro we started from 26th with Jason driving. Jason had a relatively uneventful run with the car going pretty well and the old carbon metallic pads well up to the job. Jason got down to 1:32's and sitting in the top 20 until just before the half hour mark when we were due to change over. The car started misfiring and when we swapped I couldn't get the car to run cleanly, doing a lap before coming in to check leads and then another lap where it was worse again and I brought it in and parked it.

 

The car will be in the workshop on the 11th to sort out the electrical gremlins so I can have fun at Lakeside on the 17th.

 

All in all a good weekend and pretty good, albeit frustrating result for a car just brought out from mothballs. Once the niggles are sorted I'll be able to stick it up some more of those hairdresser cars (and I can make fun of them because I own one ).

 

It was good fun to ber able to race hard and fair, passing cars both down the straight and under brakes was great and all the race craft was starting to come back, even if I have to be very polite at the moment as I'm on my provisional licence again, I should have never have let it lapse.

 

Next year the oldest car in the field should be competitive for the Qld Prod Sports Championship and also be good fun at these one hour enduros. It would be great if some more Zeds cam out to play and stick it up these MX5's I generally race against.

[260DET]

5:48? 

 

[PZG302]

That's when the brake pedal went to the floor. Not bad, 190 to 0 in 270 degrees