LCCC Safari Rally 2009

[cokesy]

Seemed like a pretty well organised event, Big thanks to all the organisers and officials.

The first Km of the first stage was awsome, the next .08 of a Km sucked the big one! Rolling blows! atleast we did it at a speccie point, thanks to everyone that put us back on our wheels

[toddski]

Going... and gone.

Couple of the photos we got there

[jamar]

Originally Posted by cokesy

Seemed like a pretty well organised event, Big thanks to all the organisers and officials.

The first Km of the first stage was awsome, the next .08 of a Km sucked the big one! Rolling blows! atleast we did it at a speccie point, thanks to everyone that put us back on our wheels

It really was one of those sucky rallying moments - the car did not deserve to do that to you guy's.. it looked strong, there was good commitment into the series of corners and then the drivers front just dug in and over she went..

more than welcome for the help - glad to hear you guy's were and are ok..

cheers

J

[Rhino]

Second service we DNF with a Broken Co driver, so in stepped the big brother for a couple of stages.

More to come got some drinking to do

[Spac]

SS1 = car handling like a giant pile of pooh, running like pooh.
SS2 = Car handling like giant pile of pooh, running like pooh.
SS3 = Car handling like smaller pile of pooh, running a bit better.
SS4 = Car handling like smaller pile of pooh, running a bit better.

SS5, Brendan ran wide on this downhill right-hander:


Oh noes! A big rock!


His right foot stays buried, but the LHS rear quarter panel smacks the rock:


Uh, oh, thank slapper! (This is looking back up the road)


And then a ditch.




Took less than five minutes to get it back onto the road. All of the wheels still point in the same direction, but it handles like pooh and the throttle sticks, so we called it a day.

Was fun while it lasted - young Brendan still has much to learn, but he uses the brakes far better than any other newbie I've ridden with, and he has the right attitude to keeping the speed up. Given some more time to get his head around the finer details, he'll be one to watch out for.
The times were pretty good compared to the other novices - and check out our time for SS4 - a 5:38 is faster than almost everyone, and well within the leaders' times...



Seriously, its probably a 6:38, which is still pretty good going.

[BlueRex]

Kelly took the new camera for a run, pics at the family gallery Just click on the malamute.

[Marcus]

:: sigh::

Wasnt lookign too bad.

SS1 - wasnt too bad, terratrip died , car handling like a bucket of crap but not bad time

SS2 - Deliberatly went slow down the back straight (and waved to VR4's last cmpetitive meter), lost 20 seconds easily. Car was settling in (warming up?) still rather taily and odd handling.

Service - fixed the wheel bearings coming loose.

SS3 - Felt better, but still has steering trouble. And 13.7 km, the passenger control arm failed and we belted a bank. ****

And with the car back in the garage, the driver's side control arm is also close to failure. Well. So that's why alloy control arms are throwaway items after two events. I'll write this down to the learning process and move on.

Back to the suspension drawing board and also work out why the hell the terratrip works with ANY other wheel but fails with a Compomotive.

Thanks to Miss Jess for putting up with the stress, Peter, Geoff, Saarah and David for service and retriving the mess, David @ Motograpics and Allan - ahte folks at LCCC at putting on a great event. Two more steps forward sorting the monster out, one back in a preparation mistake.

[Jme]

Sat in with Parker. The car was strong and we managed to jump out to a lead. Nice, clean run through SS1, and small overshoot at the HTS TL in SS2 which we overcame by some spirited driving saw us win first 2 stages. After that we decided to try to keep a lid on it a bit and have a dig in the repeat stages, Michael/Tim slowly got back some time and we dropped 14 of our 20 sec lead in the next 3 stages. Absolutely smoked East-West the 2nd time through and thought we'd blitzed them only to find that Michael and PT were ahead of us on stage time... Michael by 21 secs! We'd been within a 1/4 of a sec a K of outright at worst all rally and it was a awesome drive by Parker so we were both absolutley bamboozled by the time, and as always the one stage where you miss the time is the one you need..

It became clearer next stage when we lost another 9 that our tyres had dropped off steeply (they didn't look to bad) and it was pretty much all over. We were 20 secs behind going into the last stage, lights weren't up to the standard required, our 4 Silverstones which started as good second-handy's were shot (they were v.good early actually) and we were needing a miracle to win. We tried, spun, got a bank etc and ended up dropping 1min 50 in a stage which we just couldn't take a trick in. PT ended up coming through and getting us for 2nd which was just one of those things I guess.

The upshot is that with a few more tyres and better lights I think we can win a few rallies. The TTS boys simply had a better grip of what was needed to win the rally and were too good.

It was a good rally- well done to all who are probably sit out there doing pull down or something. A difficult rally to co-drive in on the speed cause there are so many calls and they come fast. The box calls at times are very long and we were often 1 call ahead- even at 200m- to get the information out in time. It definately a very nervous place to rally at the moment, especially in the situation Parker an I were in cause we are familiar with the roads, but don't know them in detail. Looking forward to running a few 'easy' rallies on the North Coast in the next few months!

[brendan]

Well Spac sumed the event up fairly well.

I would like to thank
Spac for jumping in the silly seat.
Nick and Mick for helping me get to the event.
Pete for helping pull the car out.
All the officials that spent the day out in the forests.

I think something's telling me not to drive datuns

[MATNESmotorsports]

Originally Posted by brendan

I think something's telling me not to drive datuns

i'm sure i told you that ages ago Brendan

MATT

[raybak]

First stage good, a bit of Pizza cutting from Tristan but overall quite good considering he hadn't really driven a car since March let alone a rally car.

Loved the run along Pipeline, fastest I've been along there.

Bummer about stage 2, engine going off song about 1km in so Tristan backed off, we were very surprised when we were still 5th fastest.

Thanks to Rick for coming to pick us up with the truck.

Also would like to thank Tim Batten and Matty Searle for their work on the engine, Tim put in heaps of time before the event, with a late night on Thursday finishing the engine.

We now have to work out what is causing the problems, think it may be the GP A fuel pump setup in the boot. But we will sort this out over the next few weeks.

Well done to Tristan on his driving on the first stage, he's made me modify my calls a bit now with his speed. Still not enough to get a seeding though

Congrats to the LCCC team on a great event, a big team effort with the usual suspects involved

Well we have some time now to save some money to spend on the engine rebuild and if there's any left over the BMW. So plenty to do before the next event.

Cheers

Ray

PS I wreckon Brendan's time on stage 4 was a 5.38, he's getting quicker but needs to upgrade to a Charade i wreckon

[rowdytoot]

I had a very pleasant day in East-West- at the RHR through gate then RGL then RGR- not far from the finish.


Mick, Daveee, Kagan, Stephen Duthie, Richard Troup and fro were the only ones showing any kind of commitment at all...

soft the rest of you ..

I pains me to say this, but even tamsey looked OK on the 1st pass I was just getting the easel from the car to start painting, but he was too fast

On the upside I took some video and will encode it at some point.

I did manage a brake pad change and tyre rotation on the navara between running of the stages.

Note to Navara owners- give Greg at GSL rallysport a call- get some QFM A1RS(something like that) pads- night and day between them and anything else...

[j o c]

hi all, thanks for a great event once again.... some photos are here for you to see:

the need for speed

pics of most cars available, some better than others.

cheers

[Kagan]

Well first and foremost

We finally got there, it has been nearly 12 months in the making but it appears that we finally have most things sorted. I think both Dad and I felt like we had done a marthon rally, its been the longest we have had to go for ina long time.

First few stages weren't great for us, having driven 30ks competetive since November last year, and not really feeling the love, it took a little while to start to get THAT feeling again.

Stage 2's times were terrible, nothing happened, just didn't really like the stage, and couldn't get myself into it. By about stage 4 it started to feel good again, and the times started to show. I just love that run along the side of the mountain in East west, well actually the whole stage is one of my fav's. Going into the last stage we had to get 9 seconds back on Mikey for class honours. Sitting there waiting to book in, it started to rain, so I was thinking it was going to be interesting. Decided to push as hard as I dare, not willing to take any big risks and sticking it off, we managed to get 4 seconds back on him. Was the closest fight we have been in and was great fun to be going against someone who doesn't take the competition to seriously and its all in good fun. Well done on the class win, it was a great drive and a well calculated, and well deserved win.

Big thanks to Dad for not only the great calling all day but also running around getting the car sorted while I was working. Also a big thanks to Marcus Dunn ad his crew for driving the Service Car out to service and to Doug and his crew for getting the Ute back to the Club, it is very much appreciated. Also to my support team for helping with the food and coming out into the forrest.

[Renee]

Firstly - I would like to thank all the organisers and volunteers. Your time and effort is very much appreciated

Secondly - I would like to thank Swiss for the giggles as usual It was fun while it lasted

Thirdly - Ian and Ric for wonderful babysitting and service crewage that goes beyond the call of duty!

Fourthly - My event report...........

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, PLEASE MOVE ALONG!!!!!
THIS SECTION HAS BEEN LEFT BLANK INTENTIONALLY!!!!