Events - 2006

14th-16th Apr - Hyden (long course) - AORC Round 1 (WAORC Round 2)

(Jez's take on the event)

We have returned from the national championship round at Hyden over Easter.  The idea was to take the new Rodeo out for it's first outing, learn a bit about the car and have a steady weekend.  It did not turn out that way!!!!

After working on the car almost non-stop for three weeks after getting it back from the welders, we made the decision on Thursday morning that we didn't have time to complete the installation of the navigator's seat.  We chose to run as a single seater which was a bit disappointing, but was always a very real possibility, so we didn't fret to much.  We finished all of the final items on the car and had it back together as a single seater by Thursday night, complete with a dressing of new sponsor's stickers on the freshly painted panels.  She was looking a treat and ready to go.

At the racetrack we were getting plenty of positive feedback from our fellow competitors.  We set up our pit area and covered it in Hankook signage which provided a great effect.  The reconnaissance was a total of 150km so I chose not to run it in the race car.  Instead I sat in the back seat of an F250 driven by someone else.  I did eventually do a short recon of the prologue track (15km) in the race car.  It was interesting to drive the car for effectively the first time and it took some getting used to.

The prologue was approx 15km and as I tried to get a handle on the car at race speed I began a very steep learning curve.  I made some mistakes but kept it on the track and recorded a time first in class and faster than I had hoped for which was a pleasant relief.  The car looked good on the track, felt smooth and didn't feel that it needed to be pushed hard to drive fast.

The first day of the event proper saw us racing into the Hyden town and returning after a parc ferme.  Total distance of ~100km.  The first part of the track followed parts of the regular track and I was familiar with them.  The second part was all new stuff that I had only seen the previous day during my recon in the back of the F250.  I started steady and after about 10km started to get a handle on the car.  I managed to try a few things and get a feel as to what the car does under different conditions.  It soon became apparent that the brakes needed pumping along the longer straights to keep a hard pedal.  It did not seem to be too much of a problem.  A few km into the new section I saw some photographers at a jump and didn't realise that it wasn't a jump at all but actually a creek crossing.  I took the crossing a bit to hard (see www.offroadracing.com.au and go to the photo gallery - Hyden 2006 page 3).  I managed to hold on and the car handled it very well.  It was enough for me to tell myself to slow up and take it steady.  That was a mistake!  About 3 minutes later, I came to the end of a long straight and realised that I hadn't concentrated enough and pumped up the brake pedal.  The extra time to bring the pedal up caused me to take the corner a bit too fast.  The car rolled twice and landed back on it's wheels.  I restarted the car and drove off the corner to a safe location (the air being thick with dust).  After having jumped out and checked over the car, and seeing nothing other than cosmetic damage I jumped back in a continued.  I finished the run out to Hyden 3rd in class, even with the few dramas, and the car went straight into parc ferme.

As we're not allowed to touch the car in parc ferme, I had to fix my dust light after the restart in order to continue.  This cost about a minute but I was soon off.  On the return trip the engine developed a miss, threw a power steering belt and eventually had a transmission failure, which turned out to be terminal and ultimately stopped the progress for the weekend.

The new RT03 tyre pattern from HANKOOK worked great and it is great to have them on board.  We certainly 'tested' the car and I feel that I have a much better handle on it.  I think perhaps I even know some of its limits now.  I think Steve (and everyone else) was a bit disappointed that "virtual Steve" (i.e. the in car camera) was not on at the time of the rollover.  Maybe we'll just have to do it again for the camera sometime.

Thanks all for the efforts put in, and we will be back at the next event at Brookton on the 3rd-4th June.

The Hyden footage will be shown on Channel 31 Thursday 27th at 7:00pm and a DVD will be produced.  There should be some spectacular footage of the cars as the Western Desert Racers club hired a chopper for the cameras.

3rd-4th Jun - Brookton (long course) - WAORC Round 3

Preparation:

Sat:

Sun - Race 1 (6 laps of 20kms):

Sun - Race 2 (6 laps of 20kms):

Summary:

The new Rodeo is performing quite well.  There are a few niggling issues with the setup, but on the whole it is (not so surprisingly) quite a good package.  We're going to have to figure out why the engine is using so much fuel, and get the navigator's seat in for the next race.

8th Jul - Harvey (short course)

(Jez's take on the event)

Wow!!!  We've just returned from the Pinjarra Engineering Harvey short course.  We finally got to take Black Betty out to race on a track that she was built for!  We had the navigator's seat in for the first time and actually got to push the car a bit harder as well.

I love the Harvey format with 4 rounds run during the night enabling the drivers to push 100% knowing that there are another 3 rounds to pick up time if something goes wrong.  Racing is under lights and the crowd gets involved.  The WDR club managed to run a great event (see Jez's organizers report) and had 500-600 spectators watching 25 cars race. This is exciting for the sport as a whole because the growth instigated by the national round run at Easter seems to be building and can only be built on more and more by other events.

Our prologue was a bit of a chance to try an get a handle on the car at 100% pace.  Unfortunately I spun on the last corner and recorded a slower time than I should have.  This ranked me down the start order for the main race.  Round 1 saw us get our act together and record a clean time of 4m16s.  This ranked us second behind Brad Cooper’s buggy, which we would start next to in the following round.  Off the line we couldn’t match Brad’s pace and had to settle in behind him.  We were getting showered with stones and mud but were catching him under brakes and into corners.  We eventually finished with a time of 4m23s.  We were then seeded against Trevor Spencer’s 4wd scout for round 3.  On the line we knew we had to go hard because the 4wd had some go and we only just got him off the line.   Part-way through the round we had some problems with the electrical system breaking down and I stalled in the middle of the hairpin.  With Trevor catching up fast we just got it going again as he caught us and we crossed the line with 4m32s.  Round 4 saw us line up against Robert Spencer driving the same 4WD Scout.  We struggled to keep up with Robert’s youthful enthusiasm off the line and were left chasing him.  As we came back down the hill we were on his rear end and as he drifted slightly wide and we snuck through.  A clean run saw us finish with a 4m15s.

Overall we finished in 3rd outright behind Brad Cooper and Max Pilmer.  Their buggies were fast off the line, but we were only 8s off their pace.  The limiting factor in our vehicle was certainly the driver and there is plenty of room for improvement.  If we can get the car to launch better we will be able to match their pace.

It was great to have Steve in the car and we need to fix a few small issues but all in all to drive the car around the Harvey track gives you a real appreciation and insight into what stadium racing was all about in these machines.  I have an increased respect for the builders of the vehicle for being able to create a machine that can handle like a go-cart but still have 18 inches of wheel travel!!  Racing in front of a the large crowd was great and provides the next step for the sport to further promote sponsors and the sport as a whole.

The next event is the Mogumber long course on the 12th & 13th August.  It would be great to see you there.

Cheers from Jeremy.

12th-13th Aug - Mogumber (long course)

Well that was an interesting event...  Not only was it the first long course that the car has run as a 2-seater, but it was one of the very few races where it has actually rained during the event.  That, combined with getting lost during reccy (blame it on Justin and some 'interesting' course marking), and throwing a timing belt after the first 15kms; meant the race was eventful if somewhat short.

So now we're faced with removing the engine to hopefully only replace the timing belt (one wonders if something broke beforehand that resulted in the timing belt getting torn to pieces).  Pictured here is the torn belt.  The damage would seem to indicate that something's been wearing on the outside of the belt, so we'll have to have a good look at all the covers and seals before we put it back together.

There's a bit of in-car video from the DVR here and the results are here.

30th Sep-1st Oct - Hyden (long course)

Well it would've been an interesting event if we'd gone, but the car was in pieces on the factory floor.  Unfortunately the engine removal took wayyyy longer than what we expected and that combined with some other conflicting events meant the car stayed in the workshop.  The upside of this is that it's more likely the thing will be on display at the 4WD show late in November, fully painted.  Well, we can hope...

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