After some gentle (and not so gentle) coercion and promise of a loaner from Brad we managed to scrape up four teams for the second of the scheduled 4 Hour Enduros at HSC for 2018 held on Sunday, 15th July.
I love this format of racing and struggle to understand why more teams don’t participate – at the first of these last year we had 8 teams which was great – we only had 4 teams earlier in the year and again only 4 this time around.
The Retro cars go strong for 4 hours and it’s a great way to test your cars and fingers.
Anyhow on the day we had:-
GJ – Gregg Erskine (on the end of a controller!) with Jake running a Brad Loaner.
OZ Products – the Bramble Father and Son team of Wayne and Cody running Wayne’s car.
Cripples – Brad and Neil (going for the sympathy vote) running Brad’s car.
Fastuff – the undefeated (on HSC) 4 hour team of myself and Stoo running my car.
At the last meeting of OZ Products and Fastuff for an Enduro (last year) Fastuff dominated with 2,652 laps to win by 105 and so OZ were out for revenge.
In that race Brad was partnered with Jake (as BJ) and Neil was partnered with Gregg (as EBO) so there was a bit of a realignment of team members this time round. In fact the way it played out was that Brad and Neil teamed up and at that stage there were only 3 teams signed up and we needed a 4th to make it viable. Brad came to the rescue with a fast loaner and Jake and Gregg stepped up to take the challenge and make it a race.
So we all got up early(ish) and gathered at the longest running commercial Slotcar Track on the Planet where three of the racers – Wayne, Stoo and me first raced (albeit on a different track) in 1970 when we were still going to school – this is where I met Stoo a mate, competitor and sometimes team mate all those (48) years ago!
To make it even more weird/interesting I first met James Colfax the owner of the raceway in 1969 at Rushcutter's Bay Bowling Alley where they had – you guessed it – a slot car track where we and others battled it out every Sunday morning.
Wow some stuff has happened over the years and here we are again
Enough of the reminiscing and off to the racing.
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Fastuff just kept pulling away after that to lead OZ by 37 laps at the smoke / feed / comfort / medication break after bracket 4. At this stage OZ were 90 up on Cripples who were 120 up on GJ.
However at the pointy end 37 laps was a good but not insurmountable lead for Fastuff and OZ were close enough to take it if Fastuff had mechanical or brain fade issues.
It was not to be – after the break Fastuff set fastest lap and most laps of the day in a bracket to just take it nearly out of reach and then sealed the deal with a solid run on Blue to be 93 laps up with Purple and Black to go.
I felt we were in a good position then as I ‘budget’ for a loss of a lap in a minute on these 2 lanes which equated to 60 laps leaving a margin of 33.
All good - only dropped 18 on Purple and 18 on Black to seal the deal.
Cripples and GJ finished 3rd and 4th respectively some way back after small issues for Cripples and a little lack of match fitness from GJ although I did notice that Jake (J was running pretty good at times and Gregg will certainly benefit from only his second outing on the track.
Fastuff set most laps on all lanes except Yellow (OZ) and fastest lap of the day (4.940 on Green) and won the day by good team driving as OZ’s car was a weapon as shown by the their times, OZ will be back I am sure and will be hard to beat again.
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Fastuff (car by Mark)
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These numbers are derived by taking a snapshot of the lap board at the 15minute (halfway) point of the bracket.
By doing this it means that if the second driver in the bracket does not get a faster time than the first driver it is unable to ascertain their fastest lap as the first drivers time will prevail on the board. If the second driver is faster we get both drivers fastest times. In any event we get the laps scored for both.
Every system is open to human error and I forgot to do the snapshot for the third bracket so split the laps 50/50 for this bracket giving the extra lap (there was an odd number of laps for Fastuff and Cripples) to Brad and myself – after all it was our Birthday and we built the cars.
Interestingly while (if I have done their analysis correctly as I know OZ did not go WC WC WC etc in the brackets but I think they went WC CW WC CW etc – let me know if I have got this wrong OZ) Cody was setting some fast laps for OZ it was Dad who was doing the laps!
In fact the 3 Amigos from 1970 – Wayne, Stoo and Moi set the 3 highest lap totals.
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Cheers
