Snowman

I'll be back for sure. Worked out I did more laps at speed at last years at Challenge Bathurst than I did for the whole weekend at Bathurst 6hr - and we finished the race on the lead lap.

Well it runs clockwise so it is mostly right turns. And what left turns there are are quite slow. (There's really just the one hairpin left)

Pete - more power AND better aero than a brick.

The top takes some learning. I definitely learnt more again last week from my previous visit.

killerwasps FTW. I was 1.2s faster than Chris in S2 (Cutting to Elbow) and he was still 4s faster than me in total. lol

Those speeds are good! I was 255/218 in my bus. Drunken - I think we are going to be team mates at 6hr next year. CXC are going to run my car for me instead of MPC - so I'll bring the squad up to 4 cars. Locked it in with Dylan this morning. Not doing it with Rod next year though - he's building an A45. I have a mate Karl joining me instead who can steer ok. 135 days to go!

Damn oath. I even got a big ass trophy that says Class A Bathurst Champion which is right up there in the cool stakes. Such a cool event - was so much less stress that a proper race weekend there. At least once every session I just backed off and did an 80% lap and just soaked up being there and driving that bit of tarmac.

Bathurst advice 101: It's flat - trust me. You don't need to lift there at all.

By gone you mean "sitting around drinking cans" I presume.

Garage 8 from 2pm to start with.

Yeah also lets ignore the fact that on the Friday the garages will be full of the cars doing the sprint...

Yeah even Duncan managed to go faster than 2.36 in an EVO. And he didn't have a windscreen.

What you are trying to say is "EVO was probably too quick for regularity so I'm taking something slower"?

Last time the event got cancelled by the council due to the event organizers doing naughty things rather than due to a lack of support. James O'Brien (original 12hr guy and current 6hr guy) is running this so I think it will remain strong. This year there was a clash with 12hr cars and the trip to NZ for the Highland 101 so I expect next year you'll see a LOT more 12hr cars etc at the event and it will be a real testing showcase. Hopefully we can still get sprint spots in road cars. I'm hoping to crack under the 2:30 mark in the mini croc. Have now gone over 1s faster at PI than I have in the EMO and I was oh so close in that at Easter this year.

No - I've been converted to the world of German engineering reliability. Plus I just love the sound of the flat 6's.

Sure is mate!

I may be biased - but the GT4 is the most enjoyable car I've ever driven for something that is equally fun on the road and the track!! Track vid

I really think it's awesome. As I said the only real bad side is that Facebook seems to be the main public place to show the quality. I uploaded one to Youtube but probably won't do it again. I tried to share it on another forum and it seems the 3D thingy from Youtube doesn't work on mobile devices as well as losing all clarity. But on Facebook and direct to my phone it's mega.

This is going to sound stupid - but honestly the biggest way to have a monumental there is to go slow. It is SO blind across the top (cutting to mcphillamy) that if you come across a slow (or worse stopped) car you literally have no time to react. If everyone drives at pace it's all good. But we had some people doing warm up / cool down laps at 6hr and man you come on them fast! But from the cutting to skyline you really shouldn't need to brake. There are a couple of small lifts but it's pretty fast the whole way. The other advice I can give is try and find a sim to do some laps if you haven't already. There is no doubt the reason I could run within 3s of my fastest time by my 3rd lap is because I'd done 11ty laps on Project Cars. l remember after my first lap saying to myself - just drive it like the sim. Otherwise - only 2 real trick corners are the cutting (you really need to keep it tight on turn in - road falls away on the back side a lot), and McPhillamy you need to almost begin your turn in before you can see it (so as you get to the top of the crest start the turn). At 170km/hr if you wait til you see it you'll run wide. Much the same as corporate hill at SMSP. And the only other real surprise corner is the little right hander after the dipper. It should be flat - but it's damn hard to get right. Most cars on R Comps would be able to take the kink flat. That said I used to roll out of the throttle, and re-position my feet so that I could be 100% ready to brake (and data showed this didn't actually lose any time compared to keeping it flat). Here's my quali laps to show some lines for a road car on R comps. The main thing really is committing to the walls - there is so much more grip due to the cambers right in at the walls so just trust yourself.

One of the other things I considered as well is one of the original aims of the sprint was to give 12hr cars some "test" time. However with the change of date none of the GT cars will be back from Highlands 101 anymore so there isn't the worry of being on track with cars doing 2:02's I had originally.

I'm currently planning on taking the Porsche (Cayman GT4). I may also find out if I can take the EVO as well IF I decide I'm going to do 6hr again next year - but I REALLY want to do some laps in the croc there. It should be similar in lap time speeds to the EVO since the lap times at PI in both cars are about the same - and I did a 2.30.2 at 6hr in that. I looked through my 6hr lap times over the whole weekend, and even with 50 cars on track I had gone sub 2:36 by my 3rd lap of the weekend and I calculated over 75% of my laps were sub 2:36 even with all the traffic, and yet I only had a 2:30 speed car. So I decided it was the sprint or nothing for me. We have a group of us entered in it - I know of 6 others in road cars entered as well (although the Racepace R33 GT-R isn't really all that road cary any more. lol)

I recently got one of the 360fly camera's. It's very cool - but the YouTube uploads are currently crap. Really only uploads well to Facebook. But I can see these taking over from GoPro's as the cool sports camera to have.

I've entered the sprint. 29's or bust!

Was a good effort on your final run Simon. Well done.

$2600 for the 2 day sprint. $1500 for the 2 day regularity (2.36 min lap time allowed) Not 100% sure on who they are going to let in for the sprint however. It does say "racecars" and says regularity is for road cars. Not exactly sure what entails the racecars requirement for the sprints but I'll be trying to enter it.