We enjoyed the perfect Queensland mid-winters day, no jacket required, but the sunscreen certainly was. The Samford Showgrounds are set in a natural amphitheatre, with 300m high viewing galleries. The local equestrian group put on a dressage event to try to win us over to a more environmentally responsible lifestyle, but we had more fun!
They tell me the most interesting part of the day was erecting the tent, but I missed that part by taking a detour and arriving a bit late. The ground is large enough to run 4 tests at once, (but we don't have that many poles) and is pretty flat and level, the grass was a bit green though, but tough enough for us.
Once we had decided which bit of grass to use for the garages, we dragged out the high-tech piece of rope to measure the courses (I must remember to take a longer piece of rope next time), all our surveying skills were put to good use, and they must have been in the right places, because we were about 5 courses in before anyone hit one. I made an excellent choice of finish garage position, (the greenest grass) Campbell skidded straight through the end on his first run.
We had entries from Campbell (City turbo II) , Shane (CRX) , Leon (EB1 Civic), Raymond (Suzuki Sierra), Felix ('93 Accord) and later on Greg Stevenson from Eumundi ('94 Vti-R Prelude). I also ran Campbell's City occasionally to gauge the difference to my Civic. Shane was Director for the day, Paul Marwick ably timed all day, and Ros kept an eye on Felix's driving habits in her car. Being a practice day, it was a good chance to introduce some new members to the fine art of driving motorkhanas, we had to try hard to convince Felix he would enjoy himself, on the other hand, Greg was most enthusiastic.
The driving surface was close to perfect, a hint of dust, and slippery enough to make you think about your line through the flags. Early on, traction proved to be a problem for the small cars with wide tyres, so Ray (a novice) with rear wheel drive and sand tyres was in front in the traction stakes. This was only my second motorkhana in the Civic, and it is not much fun to drive, it doesn't turn in like the City. I had to use second gear on one test because it's not very fast in first, but as it turned out, I was getting more grip, and I couldn't consistently beat my Civic times with the City. The City is so much easier to drive, because when you reef the hand brake, it is very predictable with how much it will slide, the Civic you have to wait and see if it slides at all. In the Hopkirk, I messed up the final turn into the centre garage both times, but did two perfect front end throws into the finish garage to make up the time.
We had to threaten Shane with violence if he didn't let us run a couple of reversing events, and he swears blind he can see out the back (I won't park behind him at Coles). I always enjoy reversing events, the trick is not to over correct, you can make up a lot of time if you do it right (6.6 seconds Shane!) Our poles are a bit short for reversing late model Preludes with spoilers though, especially when Shane buries them 6 inches deep because he doesn't want them to fall over.
Due to the smaller
number of entries, we ran 9 courses, so we covered all the styles for the
day, this gives a good idea of the range of courses likely to be run at
National Meets. We will tailor the next event more toward training, to
get the best techniques happening, after all, they are timed events, and
it is great to have a duel with tenths of seconds deciding the winner.
