Haven’t done a lot more on the Lego Porsche build as I’ve been busy preparing for a gravel race weekend.  Two separate events over the two days and a whole lot of commuting.

First up on Saturday is the Mokamoka Road rallysprint up in Hawkes Bay run by the Hawkes Bay Car Club.  So we will be cruising up to Napier on Friday for the night before heading to the venue which is about an hour north of Napier on Saturday morning.  Via BP.  Why?  Because Subaru.

Once that’s completed we’ll be heading home again, hopefully not too late as on Sunday morning we need to be up and heading over to the Wairarapa to do the Puketiro Road gravel sprint put on by the Wairarapa Car Club.  That one is just over an hour from home.

The observant readers (that’s all of you right?) will have noticed a couple of things.  Firstly, the use of “we” and secondly that I described the events differently, one being a rallysprint and the other being a gravel sprint.

A future post will introduce the team in more detail but for now, there’s me who pretends to be able to drive.  Sarah is my co-driver.  She’s responsible for calling the pace notes that we’ve made up for quite a few events.  That’s a blog topic all of its own too.
The third member is the car.  A Subaru WRX fitted out for racing.  That’ll be the subject of many upcoming posts.

As for the event types, they are fairly similar to the observer.  Take a closed section of road, gravel in these two cases, race one at a time along it, fastest time after a number of runs, usually 3, is declared the winner.
The difference is in the specific regulations but the main one that is most obvious is that a Rallysprint is run to Rally regulations and as such requires a co-driver.  It’s essentially a one stage rally event.  A gravel (or tarmac) sprint is just you vs the clock, no co-driver or passenger required but you can still take one if you want to (and the car meets certain requirements).

This week is mainly getting things ready and packed for two days of racing and an overnight in Napier.  The car will get a check over to make sure everything is good to go, then packed up with as many gravel wheels as I can fit in it, tools, jack and race gear.  Camera and datalogger batteries will get charged up and packed.  That reminds me, should really sort out some food for lunches etc.

That’s all for this update.  Feel free to leave comments and questions if there’s something you want to know about the topics I’m blogging about.  I’ve got some ideas for upcoming topics but happy to look at requests also.