MG Car Club of South Australia
2017 MG CAR CLUBS INTERCLUB CHALLENGE 10- 12 JUNE
n the Queen’ s Birthday long weekend( 10 – 12 June) the 2017 MG
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Challenge was conducted in Victoria. The Challenge is generally run every year alternating between Melbourne and Adelaide but there had not been one since 2014.
A team of ten SA competitors journeyed to Melbourne to take on competitors from Victoria( 32), Geelong( 9) and Sydney( 1). A number travelled over together on the Friday and others travelled solo as suited them. In addition to the ten competitors we had great support from Bev Waters, Ian Curwen-Walker, Chris Bray and Faye Edwards.
An early start each day was a struggle with the gates opening at Sandown on Saturday at 6:45am and at Rob Roy on Sunday at the same time. Typically early mornings in Melbourne were very cold, and dark, but the days turned out mild and sunny providing for some great competition and social fun.
The sprint at Sandown was run by the MSCA Vic in conjunction with their Come & Try sprint and it was very well run. MGs were split into three run groups and each had four runs of approx fifteen minutes for the day. Cars were not seeded by times so there was a mixture of fast and slow cars in each group. Each run group was sent out behind a safety car for a warm up lap and when the safety car left the track the green flag was waved and competition started. A noise restriction of 75dBA was set for the day as it was a“ club competition” day, i. e. road cars, not a“ race day”, but none of our members had an issue despite some early concerns.
Garry Bolt had some issues with getting the V8 to run well but did put in some good laps. Jason Edwards in the Lotus was the fastest car on the day doing a 1:24.04 lap( top speed approx 208km / h) but Non Marque cars do not score in the outright competition. The Fastest MG on the day was Peter Mathwin in the MGB GT V8 with a lap time of 1:27.55. I wonder how fast he will be when the engine is run in! Laurie Houghton was second outright at 1:29.67.
MGCCSA scored three class wins, a second and two thirds in the sprint but it is not all about wins. Wes did a personal best in the 1100 and Karen had her first run at Sandown dealing with some of the fastest cars out there.
Two runs on the day were designated“ Regularity” and the competition is to be consistent across four laps of each session with the winner being the driver with the smallest variance. The outright winner from Sydney had a variance of 0.95s over four laps! Most of us just kept trying to go faster. Our best was Karen with 2.62s giving her a class win and seventh outright.
Sandown is an awesome track and it was great to be able to compete there given that it may be subdivided for housing in the not too distant future. Sunday’ s Hillclimb at Rob Roy started with unloading in the dark and trying to keep warm. The track was very slippery for the familiarisation run and first competition run and a— Continued pg 30
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