Motorkhana/Autocross,  Wainui Quarry,  June 2003

TCS Racing is sponsored by :
ALTO

This is was a great event  at a spectacular venue.  The motorkhana's were alot of fun,  and we even managed to get our Chief Wrench (Trevor Willmot) out on the course as a driver in his front wheel drive, diesel Toyota Corrolla,  where he did very well.

Troy was the only other driver of our team able to compete on the day,  using SO863.  Troy did reasonably well although although he did collect a couple of cones on one course due to his inexperience with handbrake turns.  Two of the courses involved reversing which is particulary difficult in an MR2 because of reduced visibility caused by the small rear windscreen and the rear spoiler. Unfortunately this is made even worse in SO863 due to the competition seats which reduce visibility even further. 
Finally, because SO863 still doesn't idle properly Troy stalled on two of the reversing events when changing from reverse to first,  and this also cost him time.

Trevor did quite well,  taking the course a little slower than Troy but gaining better times because of it,  and the better rearwards visibilty. Well done Trevor !

Troy also competed in the autocross,  taking our second mechanic Timothy Willmot as passenger.  Troy's first run was very well done and he received complements on his driving from several people including Timothy.  Troy even managed to match Jeff Torkingtons time in a Honda CRX. Unfortunately this great run was marred when Troy went the wrong side of a cone,  which is not good for his official result.  This is normally considered 'going the wrong way' and leads to a time of slowest + 5 seconds.
Troy did have a second run,  however he tried using different gearing,  this lead to a slightly slower speed into two corners and reduced the amount of oversteer previously experienced leading to a slower time.

The event was run reasonably well,  with a minor dispute between competitors and organisers over the rules for one motorkhana test.  The only other problem with organisation was a break down of communication between our organisers and the owners of the venue,  which initially didn't seem to be too big a deal,  however there seems to have been some concern during the day.  Hopefully the HCMC committee will be able to smooth things over and ensure we get the venue again.  This venue was particularly good because it was a wide open space which allows novices to practice handbrake turns and powerslides in relative saftey.  The venue is relatively flat in that is had no large bumps or dips but it has many small ones which makes it very interesting to drive on.

The NZMMC club were also invited,  and behaved very well.  It was good to see them there are we hope to see some of them at other events too.

Despite the problems with our primary vehicle fun was had by all and it was nice to see the car competing again and getting our sponsors some more coverage.  We even had an enquiry from one club member about our sponsor Alto,  asking who they are and what they did.

TCS Racing is sponsored by :