Phillip Island 6 Hour Relay

[R32Big_boy]

So last weekend a few of the guys from SAU joined forces and created a little team called M.B.Racing. It was all in the name of having some fun out at Phillip Island for the 6 hour relay. The memebers were Ryan Bell, Matt Cross, Leigh Davidson, David Sidebottom, Troy Galt and Mark Firman, All of whom are members of Sau Vic. They raced everything from ryan's sileighty to a fuel injected L20 180b (yes, we're not sure why he bothered either).

Saturday: Started off as most race weekends do. Problems!!!

Let me think, Ryan; his car wouldn't run because of a crappy ground from the fuel pump.

Troy; he had brake issues.

Mark; f**ked shock and a brand new tyre that decided it would split.

Finally though everyone managed to qualify by doing 3 laps in their cars.

So that afternoon they had to decide what times they would nominate for race day, because it was a point system to work out the winner of the event. For every lap that you were slower than your nominated time you got 1 point. If you lapped within 1 second of your nominated time you got 2 points. If you went faster than your nominated time you got 0 points. They all knocked 2 seconds off their fastest lap times for their nominated times trying to get as many laps in on the sunday as possible.

Sunday:

All cars were good to go, except for mark who was still waiting on a new set of tyres.

But the guys actually started from 2nd spot on the grid because their nominated time was so quick.

The day its self ran as smooth as silk, with the help of the pit crew who came down. Bec, Hot Dogs(not THE hot dogs), Todd, Rob and Jordan all donated their time to help do the pit board and make sure the cars were out as soon as one came in.

There were several shower's throughout the day making conditions difficult for both the drivers and myself (its cold taking photos!) but they all managed to complete the day. Only THE LAG 510 managed to spin during the day, but everyone else had their moments too!

With all 30 minutes the team was coming 14th outright. But when the finial results were done it was back to 44th out of 50. This was entirely due to team strategy. Too many people went out and did wet and dry sessions, this meant that they had a big variance in their lap times, which was added then divided by the number of drivers at the end of the day to go toward their finial position.

It was still an awesome weekend though everyone had a blast doing it.

Well done to all that competed, and big thanks to those that helped out, whom without them the weekend would not have happened!

Now for some pics!

dave gets excited very easily!

A little bit wet on the exit

Ryan thought so too

Teh 180BOSS

Team Yellow gets bigger every day

More here http://www.flickr.com/photos/25681729@N08/

[Jamezilla]

Great stuff Jarrod - good work guys!

[R31Nismoid]

Great shots!

Hopefully all that work on the car paid off Ryan

[phunky_monkey]

Good stuff guys. I'm keen to do the Winton 6 hour, just don;t think it will be this year.

[R32Big_boy]

Do it in the commodore dane? Does the 180 still exist, because its been soo long since i've seen it i'm not sure if i imagined you had one or you actually owned one all those years ago.

[Belsil80]

WHat a great weekend. all that work did pay off! the amount of planning and organising for this was huge! we managed to get enough sponsors on board that all our entries, fuel food and piss was paid for! so a big thanks to firebase and jdn.. if anyone needs fire sprinklers or a crane... or a crane with fire sprinklers...

i still cannot believe that with 4 of the 6 cars not running on the saturday to have all of them out there doing full 30min sessions without fault all day sunday is amazing! and with the torrential rain we only had one person spin off... "you hack"

after seeing the results, im not caring as much that we slipped to the back simply because to win this you have to drive so consistent and thats impossible when you have done some quick laps in the dry and then it rains... its way more fun passing as many people as you can!

thanks to all the guys that helped out on the day, Bigbird for taking time out from shooting porn and Bec for being our team manager!

[Ant97GTR]

Top work guys

So what does entry set you back for this?

[dave1200]

Wicked weekend!

I'm really quite proud of our performance. First and foremost the car reliability. The fact that when under the pump all the heads went together and solved troy's long term rear brake issue as well as ryan's dying sil80. When you see other teams pulling out gearboxes and diffs in the rain you really appreciate reliable cars!

Secondly we were the only team not to have any penalties - which we worked out later had very little effect on the scoring so perhaps we were a little conservative there.

And of course how organised we were on race day due to the help of a few - thanks again Bec, Todd, Rob, Jordan, jarrod

Big thanks to Jarrod for all the happy shnaps to remember it, also the heads up you were after a few sneaky sideways shots at Honda!

[phunky_monkey]

Do it in the commodore dane? Does the 180 still exist, because its been soo long since i've seen it i'm not sure if i imagined you had one or you actually owned one all those years ago.

Proof of it's existence!

I think the commo would run out of brakes on the first corner... maybe I can tow someones car around the track?

[TTCorona]

Top weekend....

Have to say a big thanks to Bec for Team Managing, she was on top of it all weekend.. made it run a hell of alot smoother...

The results let us down a bit at the end, but we can put it down to a lack of experiance with the way the scoring system runs...

Other wise i think we did quite well as a team with no penalties like Dave said and our team also one of the highest actual completed laps in the 6hour time frame.

Which comes down to us as a team putting down some consistantly fast times and also making some very quick driver changes.

Although it was not really about the times... Our best times are as below..

A few PB's in there also... which was good considering the amount of traffic and changable weather...

Ryan - 1:58.12

Troy - 2:00.72 (First time @ PI)

Leigh - 2:00.81 (PB)

Me - 2:04.93 (PB)

Dave - 2:06.07(First time @ PI)

Mark - 2:10.26 (PB)

Also like to thank HD, Jordan, Rob & Todd for comming down and manning the Pit Board, and also lending a hand in the pits....

Definatly good times were had by all and will be looking and being back there next year i think...

Thanks

MaT

[SABBAi]

Great to hear boys. I was wondering how things went on the day. It's also very good to hear that all the Dattos and the imposter all held together, even if one cars stickers looked like they were fitted by a big man in a beard sitting in a camping chair!

[NickR33]

nice work guys! I was keen on this but was away so never put my hand up... maybe next time

great effort getting the cars to run the full day, no easy task especially with the dattos... I gotta learn how to fix my own car one of these days, I really do suck with a spanner

good pics Jarrod, love the one with the Jag and GT40 coming over the hill

[Do-Luck]

Good work boys! That looks like awesome fun!

[LAGWAGON]

what a great weekend! no shortage of prep work went into it though - lots of long nights in the shed from everyone gave us the best chance at a trouble free weekend.

Thanks to all the helpers, i don't really care that we slipped to 44th it really just means that the mini team that won is just as slow in the dry as they are in the wet. woohoo. If only we could have gotten crossy and ryan to wear a flanny we would have had the best presented team sewn up!

[R32Big_boy]

OMG, its him its THE LAG 510!

[Russman]

Great work guys. Sounds like a fun event.