It’s November.  Means a break for a few weeks after 6 events in 6 weeks.  Good for the budget.  And the various small jobs that need doing on the car now.

For example, during some of the commuting to the further away events I started noticing some shuddering from the brakes.  Seems the new front rotors weren’t up to the task when paired when the new pads.  So a new set of DBA 4000 T3 series rotors was ordered and bedded in a couple of days before Port Rd.  They seem to be much better and coping well with the racing.

Another set of new rotors

Labour weekend.  And that means the second of the two Port Road Street Sprint events of the year.  This is the home event of my club, Hutt Valley Motorsport Club.  And what a day Wellington turned on.  Couldn’t have asked for a better start.  Calm with clear blue skies.  A bit chilly at 7am when I rocked up to the pit area finding a good quarter of the field already setting up.
Conditions warmed up a bit during the day and times came down but overall seemed to be a bit slower than January.  Managed 5th in class with 2nd-5th being covered by 0.95 seconds which is pretty tight.
Final and fastest run of the day.

A week later and it was time to convert the car back to gravel mode and go play at Mangahao Dam Rd up near Shannon.  This is a new piece of road for me.  5km of very tight twisty gravel road that climbs about 300m.  Managed to get hold of a set of notes that had been made previously and went through a video from last year a few times the night before to check them.  Made a few adjustments and we were good to go.
Another chilly and very early start, departing the house at 5:30am.  BP in Otaki for fuel and a B&E pie for breakfast.  Found the venue and parked up to get the car sorted.  Changed tyres over, sorted doco and awaited briefing and event start.  Practice run and 3 officials for this one, so only really one chance to properly check the notes.  Sarah managed to score an additional co-driver ride with Leon so she managed twice as many runs as I did.  Good practice for note calling though.
All in all, a very challenging piece of road.  Mostly 1st and 2nd gear with occasional blips into 3rd.  And lots of corners keeping me busy.  Really enjoyed it and can’t wait to have another go at it next year.  6th in class and 10th overall isn’t bad for a first look at the road against some very experienced competitors.
Final, and again, fastest run of the day.

So after 6 weeks and nearly 4000km of driving including probably about 200 race kms with not a scratch on the car, while backing into the driveway after the last event, I managed to just miss the low bit and caught the mud flap between the kerb and wheel pulling that off the bumper and pulling the bumper partly off the car.  Not an ideal way to finish the day, but sometimes that sort of thing happens.
That’s now one of the tasks that I need to deal with before the final event I’ve got on my calendar currently which is another gravel event over in the Wairarapa at the end of Nov.

Maybe in the break I might be able to break out box 2 of the Lego Porsche that has been sitting unloved on the book shelf.
Watch this space.  🙂