Alfa Racing @ Winton

[Stuart Thomson]

Hi All,

A redux of my day's racing at Winton.

Up at 0400 to drive from home to arrive at Winton by 0715. Leisurely drive up, marred by lots of rain. Unpacked the car in the rain, usual check in, followed by driver's briefing and then a short practice session. The car has undergone some radical changes since I last drove it and I was keen to find out the results. The track was quite wet, I had NO grip so retired to the pits after about four or five laps to drop the tyre pressures.

Next was qualifying, I had a lot of trouble staying on the black stuff. The track was still mainly wet, with some dry patches. Rear brakes locked as soon as I looked at the pedal when traveling at speed, spun three times, two off track excursions, one heading straight for a tyre wall. Spare undies required! Car virtually undriveable in the wet.  Shame about the lack of video from my car, hopefully one of the others has some.  I could have put together a (lengthy) compilation of my excursions.

Race one was on a predominantly dry track, Carlo and myself were at the rear of the field and had a great dice all race, shame I have no footage of it as the CF card I was recording everything to has packed up and is unreadable . I didn't realise until after the race that some of the others didn't finish and we ended up second (Carlo) and third!!  A real shame about the video, because at some stage I engaged fourth gear, I think coming into the sweeper, and ripped the knob off the gearstick, I really wanted to see that video, I'm sure it would have been comical.

The next race I got a good start and was briefly up to second place after a magnificent overtaking manoeuvre on the inside of the sweeper. Whilst contemplating how good that was going to look on the video, I neglected to slow down for the next corner and understeered off the track, placing me a distant fourth. I tried to catch up, set some good lap times, but ended up fourth.
The third race we switched to the long track, again a good start, in fourth place coming up to Dudley's elbow and braked hard, lost the rear end, massive tank slapper, Carlo and Evan just managed to avoid hitting me, but Carlo span in sympathy and stalled, finished fourth.

Last race, again a good start, got left behind by the guys who can drive, just me and Carlo again, having a pitched battle, he was in front, I overtook coming into the esses, stayed in front for a while, then the car started to run poorly, I pulled up on the back straight. DNF, bugger. I thought I had run out of fuel, but instead it seems my brand new alternator is not charging the battery, I ran out of electrons.

A smashing day, will be doing it again soon.

Thanks to Neil and the rest of the AROCA gang for running a great day.  The broad grins on all the competitors, with the exception of the car that got bent and Ray Pignataro, who had an engine failure was testimony to the success of this form of motorsport.

The only thing we need now are more cars on the grid, get your Alfa, put a cage in it (if it hasn't got one already) and come out and join in the fun.

Cheers
Stuart

[aggie57]

Congratulations on the 'magnificent overtaking manoeuvre'!  Now that we need to see.....

[Sheldon McIntosh]

Congratulations on the 'magnificent overtaking manoeuvre'!  Now that we need to see.....

It was actually pretty good, I was well impressed.

Very entertaining days watching, even with the small fields.  Looks like so much fun, I'm definitely fast-tracking my build so I can get out there and join in the fun for next year.  If you do sprints and you have a cage you'd be mad not to join in also.