TECT All Terrain Park<\/a> just north of Rotorua.\u00a0 This was where Motorsport Bay Of Plenty were holding the rescheduled day\/night gravel sprint event.\u00a0 Quite lucky really.\u00a0 The original date clashed with the final round of the Trentham Autocross series and the rescheduled date was conveniently on a weekend that we had no other events planned.
\nStaying in Taupo made the race day commute a painless 1.5 hours via Rotorua to top up with 98 fuel as always.
\nIt was the second time I’ve been to TECT Park but the first time I’ve actually competed there.\u00a0 I was definitely looking forward to the Day\/Night aspect though as I love racing at night.\u00a0 Some might say it was typical of me to like doing everything the hard way but I just love challenging conditions.\u00a0 Probably why I like racing in the rain and am part of a rescue team who tend to be out in the more challenging weather conditions.<\/p>\nOnce the formalities of Doco and briefing were over, time for recce to go try to make some usable notes.\u00a0 We’re slowly learning how to do this.\u00a0 Takes time to figure it all out and it was the first time we’d attempted making them in one pass on recce.\u00a0 Previous events I’d used videos I’d found online to make initial notes from.\u00a0 This can prove tricky if someone is using a wide angle camera as it makes the corner look a lot more open than they really are.
\nOn to the practice run and only a few tweaks were needed so that was a promising start.\u00a0 The course itself was a lot of fun and testament to the countless hours put in by the club and supporters to create, build and maintain the tracks.\u00a0 It’s a nice 4km loop that has some fast stuff, tight stuff, ups and downs and everything in between.\u00a0 Even found a place to get some air miles.\u00a0 Not sure the suspension liked that a whole lot.<\/p>\n
Looking at the timesheets after the first couple of runs and I was pottering around near the back of the field as I’d pretty much expected being one of two non locals entered.\u00a0 Dave Loughlin who owns PF Automotive where I got my upgrade work done last month was share driving his wife’s WRX and as I walked past gestured for me to come for a ride.\u00a0 Now, I’m not usually found in the silly seat but figured I might as well make the most of the opportunity and see if I could learn something.<\/p>\n
I did.\u00a0 Turns out that hydraulic handbrakes can lock on if you’re not careful.\u00a0 That meant that a “5 right into hairpin left” unexpectedly became a “5 right, you might want to stop before the bank” as the car decided that it definitely did not want to go left.\u00a0 Dave stopped it in time, backed up and carried on to complete the course with no further incidents that I noticed.\u00a0 Checking the timesheets and found that he was still a good 10 seconds faster than me, even with a spin, three point turn and recover.\u00a0 Hmm, clearly and unsurprisingly, my driving still needs work.
\nWith one more run to go and conscious of the “copycat” factor that often happens after going for a ride with someone a lot quicker than yourself I went out to see if I could push the grip more than I had been as there was clearly a lot more of it that I wasn’t making use of.
\nWith a nice clean run we took 9.5 seconds off our previous best to be very close to matching Dave’s spin run.\u00a0 I was happy with that, and to celebrate, suggested that Sarah went for a ride with Dave on his final daytime run.\u00a0 She came back with a grin and effectively had a much faster time around the course than I did.<\/p>\n
Dinner break happened while the course was reversed from the day time.\u00a0 Same loop, but in the opposite direction for the night runs.\u00a0 Interesting concept, but why not?\u00a0 Another recce to make some notes for this loop while it was still daylight.\u00a0 Then a practice run was suggested given that it was still going to be light-ish for a while longer.\u00a0 Not too many tweaks needed to the notes this time.
\nFinally on to the actual night race runs.\u00a0 Running the extra rally lighting is always fun.\u00a0 It means that there’s plenty of light where they are pointing but not a whole lot anywhere else, so you do get a bit of a tunnel effect.
\nFirst run was not as fast as I’d like but the second and final one we pulled back a decent chunk of time and got to within 3 seconds of the daylight (opposite direction) time.\u00a0 Happy with that.
\nRapid pack up in the dark and after the goodbyes, headed back to Taupo for the night and the decision to hit the road early the following morning in order to miss the expected traffic as it was the last day of the school holidays.\u00a0 Six hours sleep is enough right?<\/p>\n
The second event was the second and final round of the Hawkes Bay Car Club rallysprint series.\u00a0 Held at Tangoio Settlement Rd about 35 mins north of central Napier.\u00a0 We turned up and found not many people present.\u00a0 Then found we were one of the last ones they were looking for to do doco.\u00a0 Not huge numbers.\u00a0 At briefing it was noted that we should all make the top 16 run (8 4WD and 8 2WD) as there was only 11 entries in total.\u00a0 Given there were only 4 4WD’s, that meant automatic qualification into the top 8 (4 of each) run also.<\/p>\n
We were once again making notes on the day so on recce I called out something that seemed relatively convincing and we tried that out in practice.\u00a0 Wasn’t too bad though a couple of corner sequences had both of us confused as there was a couple of sections of corners with no gaps between them.\u00a0 Made a couple of refinements on the next run and started pulling some time out on the practice time.\u00a0 With four in the class it was fairly clear early on how the order was going to be.\u00a0 Clint Cunningham well clear in the lead.\u00a0 Bruce Baird sitting about 5 seconds ahead of me with Andrew Lowe in the Legacy sitting about 4 seconds behind me.<\/p>\n
First elimination run and suddenly Andrew is 0.2 seconds behind me.\u00a0 Whoops, that’s going to be challenging.\u00a0 But still, just fighting over 3rd and 4th really.
\nSecond elimination run and the 4 of us are all still in, but this run will cull out the bottom two and leave the fastest two.\u00a0 Not really expecting much to change, but when we get back to the pits Bruce stops and says that he was playing pinball down the stage and was out of the running.\u00a0 Both Andrew and I had gone faster but it was Andrew who just pipped me for the Top 2 spot by 0.7 seconds.\u00a0 Close battle for sure.<\/p>\n
End result was 2nd in class (post 1996 4wd), 3rd 4WD, and 3rd 4WD for the series.
\nGotta say that I’m pretty pleased to have got that sort of result, especially given a blown turbo in the first round, but helped considerably by only 3 4wd’s actually doing both rounds.\u00a0 As they say, gotta be in it to win it.<\/p>\n
Spent most of the day watching the weather from the top of the hill we were on.\u00a0 Could see a decent thunderstorm hammering Napier with the odd shower coming over us but mostly fine right up until it was time to pack up.\u00a0 Couple of big booms, then with a gust of wind we got hammered by a torrential downpour with added hail for good measure.\u00a0 Sunny Hawkes Bay.\u00a0 Good times.<\/p>\n
Today the old girl got a wash down and this week I’ll be swapping her back to tarmac settings for Port Road this coming weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been a busy few weeks and feels like I’ve spent most of the time driving.\u00a0 Not that that’s a particularly bad thing as I do like driving.\u00a0 Handy given my main hobby. The last two weekends have seen us covering around 1200km in touring, firstly to TECT All Terrain Park just north of Rotorua.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-race-car","7":"category-racing","8":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7RrqC-37","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motordrivephotography.co.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}