Triathlon, Foremans Corner, January 2003
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TRIPLE D
CONSULTING
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This event was held at a farm just north of Whangarei, owned by George Foreman, hence the name. Thanks to George for providing such a wonderful venue for this event.
Troy left the day prior to the event with other members of the HCMC, Sean was unable to make it due to the supposedly immenient birth of a new child who decided to keep everybody waiting anyway. Richard was intending to come up the morning of the first event, but was put off by terrible weather in Auckland and dire forecasts. Luckily for those of us at the event the weather was fantastic, in fact it was almost too hot for us to get into our race suits.
The first day's event was a motorkhana held in a grass paddock, there were four circuits and each competitor got two runs of each. Troy was given some instruction on how to perform hand brake turns the night before by Chris Subritzky, and used this event to practice what he'd been shown - with some success.
Unfortunately our team suffered a serious set back on the second day when the Hillclimb event was run. Troy managed three runs in the vehicle before lunch, and then decided to pick up the pace a bit. On his fourth run he started off well, with several members of the club and some of his family who were watching at the time, commenting that his driving looked good for the first half of the course. Unfortunately having made it through the hardest parts of the course Troy became slightly too agressive, and only a few hundred metres from the finish, left the road through a wire fence, slid along a grassy paddock and stopped after parking the front end into a tree at high speed. It was a good thing the tree prevented the vehicle from going any further, as the tree itself was sited on the bank of a small creek. Had the tree not been there Troy may have found himself upside down in the creek. Troy was unharmed, although the front of the vehicle is a write-off, however all of the mechanicals are still fine, and so our team is now looking at using these parts to repair what used to be our spare parts car.
It has been suggested by the timers, who had been fairly accurately guessing the times of each competitor before they arrived at the finish line that had Troy completed his run he would have achieved a quite respectable time of somewhere between 1.04 and 1.05. Despite the accident, Troy did not come last in the event.
The accident was likely not helped by the worn front shocks, and at the point where Troy left the road is a bumpy hollow, leading some people to suggest the car may have skipped sideways into the deeper gravel, leaving Troy without much chance of recovering the slide that lead to our cars destruction.
Prior to this two spectators had leaned on the newly repaired side guard of the MR2, and their weight was sufficient enough to move the panel out of alignment again. This mean Troy was unable to open the door without chipping paint off the body work. Seeing as the door would sitll open in an accident (which proved to be very useful later on) Troy elected to continue racing, however this meant he had to enter and exit the vehicle "Dukes Of Hazard style", i.e through the window. Troy is reported as saying this would be easier if he were shaped like a Duke, rather than Boss Hog.
Troy was loaned Jeff Torkington's MR2, which our team is considering buying, to use in the autocross the following day. Jeff's MR2 is in a different class however, so Troy's times did not count towards his overall event scores. As far as his overall points go he will be awarded slowest time + 5 seconds for the autocross.
Thanks to the HCMC and George Foreman & Family for helping make this event possible.
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