FTO Drivers Club, Western Australia

[RichardH]

14/3/2004
ROUND 2, MC MOTORSPORT - Team "Captain Chaos"

What a day...

Got off to a dodgy start when I realised the squishy brake pedal I thought I'd bled out yesterday had reappeared overnight. Which meant the bleeding job I'd done had been, well, crap. It wasn't dangerously squishy, mind you... just none of that spot-on pedal feel I had become so accustomed to. Bugger.

This meant I had to work twice as hard in the car, and also had to leave a little more room to get the damn thing settled and slowing at the end of each quick bit.

I felt like a bit of a donkey sitting in the staging line pumping the brake pedal furiously in advance of my run. But then, late in the day, I walked past one of Team Porsche's sweet rides (5-10 times the cost of my little roller skate) and guess what? There was that all-too-familiar sound of the brake pedal being pumped like mad a dozen times!

Despite taking it v-e-r-y conservatively in the riskier course bits, I still managed to clock a personal best in Challenge 10. Sort of made up for the ultra-conservative runs on Challenge 11 - I guess I was really serious about not driving over the orange bits of the course.

Team driving was great again today. Nobody got a WW, and we didn't clock a single penalty towards the cumulative team times ("three fastest of each four runs" rule). In fact, only 2 cones hit in total (ie. 26 out of 28 runs were "clean").

Nick got line honours for fastest team member in Round 2, with (unofficial) times as follows:

Nick - 355.36
Leigh - 373.47
Zan - 368.71
Rich - 357.05

I say 'unofficial' as they were just taken from a photo of the timing board. Proper official results should be out Tuesday or Wednesday. Oh, and I can't add up. Just thought I'd mention it... hehe.

After scratching some more iffy sums out on the back of a beer mat, it looks like we might have jumped up a spot or two in the team placings! Official tallies come out in a few days, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Mother nature certainly helped by giving us a clear, sunny day today (unlike last weekend for Groups A & B). Next month, it could just as easily be the other way round!

Finally...

Thanks to Paul and Tobey from FTOWA.COM who came all the way up to spectate (as well as pick up those calendars!). And special thanks to Dave, who acted as the starter all morning - on zero hours sleep too!

- Rich

[RichardH]

Round 3 tomorrow. Thankfully, the brakes are back to 100%, so it should be good fun again... The last round was too much like hard work!

Now all I've gotta do is change the wheels over to r-comps, pull all the junk out of the boot, do an oil change, fit the harness and seek out all of my 2-year-old daughters toys, nappies and tea-set cups from the interior. I just hate it when a bright pink plastic teapot rolls under the brake pedal at the end of the first slalom.

- Rich

[RichardH]

What a great day! Some great driving from all the teams competing (including a new lap record from Blaise on the CDR team).

Once again, Captain Chaos got a clean set of team times up on the board. That's a perfect record for all three rounds to date. Awesome work.

Turns out I ran a new personal best on Challenge 3 (lopped almost a second off a time I'd set in a January 'individual comp' day). Leigh got out there in the same run and posted the second fastest time - way to go!

Nick is making muttering noises about getting r-comp tyres, so he can blast around and break the sound barrier, hehe. Go on, Nick... you know you want to!

All in all, it was really satisfying to see everyone's times improve as the day went on, and get progressively closer together. With Zan putting in some super-quick runs on Challenge 3, we all ran times within 1.25 seconds of each other.

As I said, a really great day! Can't wait for the next one...

- Rich

[Zan]

yeah it was a great day out. Expect for the first few tracks for me. I was still in sleepy mode.. lousy neighbours decided to have a big party the night before. Grrr!

Go on Nick.. get those R-Comps.. you make too much squeeling noise
as you go around the course anyway.

-zan

[RichardH]

> Go on Nick.. get those R-Comps.. you make too much squeeling noise
> as you go around the course anyway.

Oh come on now Zan, he doesn't complain THAT much...

Just stirring, Nick.

- Rich

[RichardH]

Well, I got in a practice session at MC's today. And would you believe it, Nick rocked up too. Double the Chaos!

Had some really good results today too... new personal bests on all three courses we ran! Finally got into the 47s on the Challenge 4 slalom. Yummy. No thanks to the dags on the scoreboard who wrote some crap time two seconds slower up there to wind me up, lol.

More fun was had when Nick foolishly let me drive his Type R in anger. Talk about a go-kart! Sharp little vehicle, that's for sure. Then he paid me back by thrashing the FTO for a lap, hehe.

Hardly a drop of rain all morning. Perfect. Hopefully the weather will be good for the comp in 2 weeks. Can't wait!!!

- Rich

[Zan]

Yeah. So i hear. I caught up with Nick later that night and he still had this big grin on his face from his speccy tyre smoking sideways drift that he did.


Sure did sound speccy though. hehe.

[RichardH]

Oh yeah.... he got the Integra more than 90 degrees around before swinging it back straight and entering the corner at about the right speed/position. Very amusing!

- Rich

[RichardH]

ROUND 4 - May 9th, 2005

The weather... oh boy, the weather.

Today was without doubt the most challenging and demanding day I've ever spent behind the wheel. Even more so than that night in 1987 when I had to drive four drunk idiots around in an unfamiliar car as they played AC/DC and mooned the police.

Anyway.....................

We were running in the afternoon. I got there around 11:30 to be faced with a wall of water falling from the heavens. And those poor morning session drivers were out there, fording their way through standing water, wipers on full, fogging up and generally having a very interesting time!!

I should have brought an outboard motor!!

The first session was running really late, so our start was delayed. In retrospect, this was a blessing in disguise... the rain slowly started to clear up for us after the third run. By the end of the day, the very top part of the track was getting dry(ish).

All of us Captain Chaos drivers were looking pretty iffy about this. Firing yourself around a tight track, with a couple of unfamiliar courses, in conditions that looked more like the Avon Descent whitewater challenge...? Oh right, we do this for Sunday fun, do we? Suuuure....!

My first run after the 'warmup' Challenge 0 wasn't great. I was working so hard at seeing where I was going, trying to hear/feel the tyres at work (or not), etc. I wigged out for a second and the car got ahead of me. Faced with going the wrong way past where I should have turned in, I decided to just run over the relevant traffic cone instead of going around it. Sounds dumb, but a 'wrong way' is slowest time of everyone out there, plus 5 seconds - but driving over a cone is just 'plus 5 seconds'.

So I was still in there, but with a cone under the car. It dropped out a second or two later. I was close to finishing my run when I came across that same damn cone again. The suicidal little bugger was sitting smack in the middle of the final corner entry. So, go around it, or ignore it?

I wiped it from my vision, and just tackled the corner as normal. And ignored the huge *WHACK* as it shot up under the car once more. This time it hitched a lift all the way back to the garage. Some nice bloke pulled it out, and I took it all the way back to its rightful place. Coney's Big Adventure was over.

I wasn't the only one having trouble. There were quite a number of wrong ways and +5 from all teams participating. Our 'Captain Chaos' team had our fair share. Leigh got crossed up on the same course I had trouble, and Andrew got lost somewhere between the "Deep Impact" tsunami and the humpback whale pool. Andrew, who was standing in for Nick, must have wondered just what he'd got himself in for!

After a bad start, we decided to press on and just do our utmost to post some clean times. And avoid drowning. Gradually, we pulled it together and posted some half-decent times.

We ended up running 4th out of the 6 teams in the afternoon session. We won't know where we stand overall for a couple of weeks though. Having said that, it was great to know that we'd done Hell Day at MC's - and lived. No damage, no crashes, no mechanical failures. And I for one learned a whole lot... it's been almost a year since the last time I drove in the wet at MC Motorsport. With winter finally upon us now, it was good to find those wet road skills still buried somewhere in the old brain!

- Rich

[Zan]

For sure!! I won't be forgetting yesterday anytime soon.

i was secretly hoping that they would cancel the day due to the track turning into a pool ... but no such luck.

But it was good fun to try it in the wet.. and come to grips with the car under
different conditions.

Sorry guys for leaving early.. I had other commitments to try and meet. I guess the WW and +5 I got on my back to back run kinda showed that I was in a bit of a rush.

Oh well.. let's hope for a dry track next time out.

-zan

[RichardH]

I've just found out that the fall I had the day before Round 4 comp resulted in a broken rib.

No wonder it hurt like hell when I got into that 4-point harness and did seven courses of MC challenges!

I didn't know it was broken, honest!

Is that dumb or what? No, wait, don't answer that.

- Rich

[RichardH]

It would have been a bit nicer to drive in today's sunny, cool conditions!

Oh well. Perhaps some of that nautical MC's driving will help keep us alive on public roads this winter, hehe.

Best of luck to the Group C day ppl...!

- Rich