Goomalling Flyer 2016 – 15th October
The 15th October saw a number of SCBC people converge on the town of Goomalling for the 2016 “Goomalling Flyer”. This event was last run in 2013, so it was eagerly anticipated by everyone concerned.
The local Shire was very much in favour of the event and provided lots of support.
Our member Craig Bradtke was part of the organising committee, as he is a member of the VSCC WA as well. Some of you may also know Randle Beavis, Ross Oxwell and Lynn Oxwell who were also key members of the organising team. The event was run by the VSCC and all the timing was provided and run by the SCBC.
Other members who were there on the day are:
Les Wachtel as Chief Timekeeper
Liam Darlaston-Jones as Assistant Timekeeper
Mike Stoney and Ken MacKenzie came to spectate
John Harrison, Steve Cardy, Butch Jeff and Rad Dickerson were officials doing car control for the grid and finish line observation.
Greg O’Brien [Westfield SEW], Peter Mace [Locost], Craig Bradtke [FF2000 Van Diemen] and myself [Birkin] were competing. Other non-member clubbies on the day were Tony Brett [Westfield], David Tweddle [Westfield SE] and Mike Connell [Elfin].
Peter, Liam and I went in convoy to Goomalling. We stopped for breakfast at the cafe in El Caballo and had breakfast. Liam opted for the full bacon and egg grill, which was enormous! He persevered with it and finished everything except the sausage!
Once we arrived at Goomalling, it was all hands on deck to set out the course, erect the Club shelter and set up the timing equipment. Many hands made light work of this, although there was a long delay while we waited for the final track inspection. The SCBC equipment trailer had its first official outing on the weekend and carried cones, shelter etc to the event.
The event used the main street of Goomalling, with a slight diversion into the entry road for the train station. There was a 180º turn at James St and then back to the finish garage, again via the train station road. Track length was about 800m.
Thirty-two competitors started on the day. The attached provisional results show the range of cars that were there on the day. The weather was, to say the least, quite damp and windy to start off with. Not at all pleasant for the officials huddling together and holding the shelter down to stop it blowing away. It gradually dried out as the day wore on.
We had two “sighting” runs to get a feel for where the track went, as being a street circuit, there were potholes and roadside furniture to deal with. Due to the track layout, the lead cars had to wait for the tail to clear the road before finishing the sighting run, while the tail cars had to stop and wait for the lead cars to continue.
On the practise run we were advised to not go too hard. However I think I obviously didn’t quite understand what that meant! The outbound run to the roundabout went fine, but I arrived at the roundabout going way too fast and then couldn’t pick the actual track between all the cones. The split-second of indecision was enough to see me go straight ahead and hit the tyre barrier in the centre of the roundabout! Very embarrassing! I limped back to the pits to assess the damage while the officials put the track back together.
No great damage, luckily. The fibreglass nosecone took a bit of a battering with a number of cracks and scratches. The grille, numberplate and the bonnet badge all got ripped off, and the Dorian mount under the front was broken. However there was no structural damage so after an inspection by the scrutineers I was allowed to continue running.
We then had three official runs and a number of extra runs. The three runs decided FTD and the winners. I have also included a set of results for just our Club members, using all runs, not just the three official runs. SCBC members performed very well, taking 3 of the top ten official results and 4 of the top ten when all runs were counted.
Peter Mace did really well with a best time of 43.445 on run #5, having struggled with consistency on the first three runs. Craig got a best time of 43.723 with only two runs. His third run wasn’t timed but unfortunately he wasn’t advised of this so didn’t go out for another run. Greg O’Brien and I always seem to be running neck and neck. I managed to beat Greg in the three official runs but he did a fantastic job of beating me by 4/100ths on his 5th run. As Greg hasn’t driven in anger for some time this was even more impressive.
My third run was my best. I managed to get around the various wiggles and corners without being too untidy and stopped the clock with a 43.865. On the fourth run I made a mess of the roundabout and went up the kerb. I tried to break traction with the rear but didn’t manage it properly so ended up running wide, which lost me nearly a second. On the fifth run the roundabout was a bit better, but coming into the train station on the return leg I felt the engine lose power a bit. A glance at the oil pressure showed no issue so I kept going. However once I was stationary at the finish line I could hear a heavy clunking from the engine so I powered it off immediately.
That was pretty much it for the competitive part of the day. Liam and I worked through the results and entered them into the laptop so that the VSCC could make the awards. The rest of the team packed up all of the equipment and helped the council remove all of the barriers. We then joined everyone in the pub for a chat and the presentations.
FTD was John Webb in the Porsche with Dick Ward very close behind in the Fiat.
After the presentations Liam and Pete helped me push the Birkin back onto the trailer and we had an uneventful convoy trip back to Perth. To date I haven’t started to dismantle the Birkin, but I suspect a conrod or crank has let go, so there will be a bit of work required. The motor has nearly 100K kms on it [I thought it was more] so it isn’t all that surprising that it has had a problem. As the Birkin isn’t a daily driver now I may try to scrounge together the money to get some better cams and the associated hardware.
Provisional Results goomalling-flyer-2016-provisional-results
SCBC Results goomalling-flyer-2016-scbc-results
You must be logged in to post a comment.