2022 Shannons PCQ Motorsport Round

1

Lakeside Sprint 19 March

In the end, we were lucky that the Club’s first track day of the year went ahead following the deluge of constant rain and flooding that occurred over SE Queensland during February and March. Fortunately, the adjacent lake was at low tide and well clear of the track. The consistent rain had thoroughly cleaned the track and several Club members who ran in the morning’s General Practice session noted that the track was slippery in parts and just be aware. The first track day after the summer break tends to take some time to arrange the brain cells into race mode rather than cruise mode. Add to that, the tasks of recalling braking points and following race lines, the first run of the day feels like your first ever time on the track. At least by the second run, the brain has managed to realign itself and you start to feel at home in the driver’s seat rather than just being a passenger. Looking back on that, it is likely to be age related but you try and blank it out! The track day was the afternoon session, with the

Club securing two run groups each of 15 cars. It was pleasing to note that there were five drivers attending their first track day with the Club: namely Antonio Peronace, Grant Green, Andrew Mills, Ross Richards, and Derek Gibbons. The event also saw the return of a trim and taunt Philip Holzberger to the track in his McLaren 650S. As a change and probably a nice way to start the season, Antony Van Der Drift drove his delightful 1958 356 instead of the 911. This was the first event that utilised the new point scoring system, which basically compares the ratio of each driver’s benchmark time to their best lap time as a percentage. If slick tyres are being used, a one second penalty is added to the best time. Henry Sinclair, Michael Treffene, and Gary Taber all drove well to surpass their benchmark times. Overall, around forty percent of drivers were within two seconds of their benchmarks.

Cars were entered in all classes, with A Class again dominating the number of entries. Open Class with Paul Ford, Stan Adler and Steve Cooper was close all afternoon with similar times in the order of 59 to 60 seconds. The 911 GT3s tend to dominate A Class, however, the Cayman GT4 is now making inroads with the likes of Henry Sinclair, Alex Haigh and Mathias Butcher. Henry led the field from Michael Treffene, Brad Gall, David Lees, Glen Wallace, and Andrew Mills who were all within two seconds of the lead.

As for B Class, Gary Taber in his 1986 944 turbo had a close tussle with Don Munro’s superbly restored 1974 911 powered by a 3.8 L engine providing that distinct air-cooled burble. Just behind the front two was Jeff Nottoli, Aiden Lefmann, and Bill Black who were all within a whisker of each other.

In C Class, Jeffery Dunn, and the Cayman “master” and recently awarded Club Person of the Year, Justin Clarke, led the field followed by Graham Wood and Derek Gibbons. D and E Classes were represented by John Datson and Antony Van Der Drift. The Associate group has been consistent over the last year with around five drivers competing regularly. The drivers for this event were as already mentioned Philip Holzberger (McLaren), Chris Battista (MX5), Ryan Black (Lotus), and Joe Catalano (Toyota 86), who was out for his first drive in this car.

Don’t forget that it is back to Lakeside for Round 2 on the 30th April 2022.

John Datson and Kevin Vedelago