Yes, it’s Monday night and I’ve only just now gathered up the energy to sit down and summarise the weekend. It was crazy, fun, tiring and totally worth it.
As mentioned in my last post, I had abandoned my attempt to do an “on the road” weekend settling, instead, for a more sensible and conservative plan. I’ve summarised Friday already so let’s move on to Saturday.
After struggling out of bed, I did some chores in the morning which included taking the wheels off the VFR in preparation for taking them to the track on Sunday. I set out a little earlier to Goulburn so I’d have plenty of time to check things out at the Speedway. Surprisingly, there is more of a motorcycle connection to the night than you’d think. Compact speedcars used to all have car engines and the maximum capacity allowed was 1300cc. Then some clever people started putting motorcycle engines in the cars on the basis that they were cheaper, more powerful and easier to replace if something went wrong. The authorities mandated a maximum limit of 1000cc for motorcycle engines which made perfect sense. Over the last few years I have watched the gradual influx of motorcycle engines to the point where, out of the 32 cars entered for the title on Saturday night, only two had car engines.
Of all of them, the most interesting was the car of the current (and six time) Australian Champion, Darren Vine from Queensland. Darren’s dad runs a turbocharging business so it was natural that he would choose a turbocharged engine for his cars. The rules say that there is a maximum capacity 700cc if the engine has forced induction so they chose a Triumph 675 triple. It truly is a work of art.
Unfortunately, Darren’s car popped a clutch in the first heat and he had to revert to his back-up car. Since he hadn’t scored any points in Heat 1 he didn’t have to forfeit any of them for using his other car. In the end, and after a marathon night of racing, Vine emerged as the winner after starting from position 8 to make it 7 titles in total.
But the meeting ran late, very late, and I didn’t get back home till 0130. At 0730, with eyes and voice box both sore from the previous night’s commentary, I hit the road for Eastern Creek.
Thanks to Michael Onrust from Zuma Power Products, I went along equipped with an electric bike that Michael had offered to me to help me get around the pits. What an inspired suggestion. It is a great little gadget which I thoroughly recommend.
As usual, the pits were crowded to capacity and it was very hard to know where to look first. The celebrities, the gorgeous bikes and the legendary riders, Schwantz, Spencer, Magee, Parrish, were available and amiable. Despite a whole day meandering the pit enclosure I still had the feeling at the end of the day that I had missed a lot. Reading other peoples’ posts and seeing their pictures makes we think that I was probably right!
The racing was great and the socialising was even better. I’m happy to say that many of the luminaries are people who I know personally and many of them I have known as friends for many years. It’s fun to think that I have followed them and their careers for a long, long time.
When speaking to Kevin Schwantz, I said, “Oh, by the way, Deaano Swims and Ottis Lance asked me to say hello to you.” He replied, “Well, we all come from Texas, and I have to say that Otter asked me to say hi to YOU!” I love my job.
So the Sheene is over for an other year. Again, congratulations to PCRA and all of their people for pulling off a minor miracle (again).
But far from being the end of the day, it was just the end of part of it. I had volunteered to pick my daughter up from the airport when her plane from Queensland landed at 2100 so I was finally home at 2330.
To say that it was hard to get out of bed this morning is putting it mildly.
Here’s the photos from Sunday.
