Wakefield 300

[Blesif]

Happened by Mania today and they had a Qld car there for a couple of adjustments - its entered in the 300. The whole thing was mirror wrapped except for a carbon hardtop and some tastefully placed sponsor logos. Very attractive and eye catching to say the least. Unfortunately I can't make the meet, I'm sure it will be an interesting weekend with lots of competitive MX5s.

[Bauer]

Good luck to all the Targa Racing crews at Wakefield this weekend.

Good luck to Lou and Owen too. Hope you have a good run guys.

will be keeping an eye on results

[evil_weevil]

Jake Shelly won it again! Congrats!
After seeing pics and results over the weekend I'm doing it in 2014!

[Suspense]

Strong results for the Mania cars again as fastest MX5s. Any idea when Speedweek coverage of this will be airing (assuming they filmed it)?

[mazmad]

The Lotus (came second) set the fastest lap by 3 seconds Three mx5s in the top ten with a couple of mx5s dnf.

[mx5002]

Where abouts did you see the pics from the weekend?

[mx5racing]

As always the event was an epic one with the various divisions hotly contested.

Our cars finished 2nd (Andrew McKay/Hartley Sutcliffe), 3rd (Adam Dodd/Mark Bell) and 4th (Matilda Mravicic/Geoff Kennedy) in division 4. The win was taken by Sam Silvestro and Greg Tasker who drove faultlessly all day. Andrew and Hartley were leading with only a few laps to go when contact with a back marker mean a drive through pit lane for some quick repairs and their ¾ lap advantage was lost. Nevertheless the crews all had a great time and cant wait for the next one!!

The other car (Daniel Reynolds/Morgan Freeman) managed to sneak into division 3 in quali which was an outstanding effort considering all the cars around them were on slicks. Again they were punching well above their weight and looking great for a podium when contact with a backmarker damaged the car and then shortly thereafter forced them into the pits and retirement.

Drive of the race for me was Neil Halls and Daniel Byron who calmly got things done and drove superbly fighting their way through the field to claim 7th outright beating home some much more exotic machinery. Awesome effort guys and great to see!!

As always it was great to catch up with all out friends from Qld and Vic especially Chris and Owen Boak who made the trip to drive with Lou (Boyracer) in the Ebay special. They had a great time and I’m sure will be back again!!

This event is growing and growing and one you should all do your best to get to!!

Special thanks to the our great pit crew of Zane, Nick, Bill, and Kristen. Also extra big thanks to Matthew and Adam Ronke who work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure everyone has a great time at both the Wakefied and Winton events . It is fantastic to see the support this event now has and is a credit to their vision and hard work - well done

The whole TargaRacing team can't wait for the next one at Winton in November!!

[evil_weevil]

Good review Chris.

perhaps the guys that entered could give us people a bit of insight to prep and costs.

i.e. what did you organise such as tyres, brakes, etc etchow far out was the planning?

cheers!

[Boyracer]

Chris we used Kumho semis medium compound, they looked great at the end, will just flip them on the rims and use them for the Winton 300, I always use Hawk blues, I reckon they wore about 10%, we probably used about 60litres of fuel for the whole race... So for our cars it's not really that bad cost wise

Here is my write up on the race...
Our plan was to build a MX5 that is pretty much standard and do the Wakefield 300...Hopefully ring it's neck for about 300kms, finish the race with no problems and maybe get in to the top 20... Gotta love it when things go to plan,

Finished 20th, car was perfect all weekend, Owen Boak did a great job bringing the car back in one piece, a mix up on the grid saw us start about 7 positions further back then we should have been and bad luck with safety car saw us loose 2 laps very early, I'm sure we would have challenger for Class win otherwise as I passed the class winning car twice during my stint.

Thanks heaps to Gai and Chris and Jean and also to Elements Restorations and Hume Smash Repairs for their support.

[mazmad]

Well done all mx'ers.

Good job to Michael Hall and codriver Taylor at 10th in the Carbotech mx5 too.

And +1 for weevils comment...
"i.e. what did you organise such as tyres, brakes, etc etchow far out was the planning?"

[neilh]

Thanks Chris. Daniel and I were ecstatic with the result yesterday. To walk away from my first ever endurance race, and Daniels second endurance race winning Division 3 and cracking the top 10 outright is something we are very happy with, especially after starting from 26th on the grid. A big thank you must go to David and the rest of the MX5 Mania team. As mentioned this was our first endurance event and these guys really helped us out, both in regards to what we needed to do to prep the car to helping during the race weekend and also with pit stops etc.

perhaps the guys that entered could give us people a bit of insight to prep and costs.

i.e. what did you organise such as tyres, brakes, etc etchow far out was the planning?

Asking how much it costs to run the Wakefield 300 really is like asking how long is a piece of string. Daniel and i split the cost for the weekend. Overall we probably spent about $1500 each. This included entry, garage, fuel and a brand new set of slicks which we used in qualifying and the race. These tyres are finished now. We were lucky that Powerplus racing fuel helped us out with some fuel for the weekend, so this helped to keep the cost down. On the other hand we noticed other teams had 3 new sets of tyres for the weekend

In regards to prep, you will need to think about your car specifically and what class you would like to run in. there is no generic answer. For example, if you are going to run in a class with one fuel stop, will your car do 300 km on two tanks of fuel or will you need and second tank in the boot? Do you want to try and run flat out all day, or do you want to run in a lower division and conserve the car a little? All these factors will impact on your preparation, and also the final cost. Daniel and I started asking these questions and doing our homework when we agreed to drive together in about December, So there is defiantly a lot of preparation involved, but i would expect this would get easier after the first event. There are heaps of MX5 races out there that have done heaps of these events, i am sure they would be happy to point you in the right direction if you have a chat with them.

Hope this helps Chris.

[colster3]

Congratulations Neil and Daniel

A well deserved class win!!

My throttle foot sure is itchy...

[evil_weevil]

Cheers Neil, congrats on the result! You and Daniel must be stoked!!

Oh yes, of course everyone's budget will be different, just getting an idea on a basic entrant. Lou seems to have a great enduro package there with the eBay special. Not too sure how the divisions work...but I'd love to be in a lower one haha
Just wondering if a tired na8 motor with 155k on the clock would be up to the task.

I did see on natsoft that Brian Anderson was by himself? No co driver?

[tiki]

I was out there on sunday. Good day. uploaded some photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiitsaul

[BigDaddy]

I was reasonably happy with our result, we were nowhere near getting any kind of result. Qualified 38th, but slowly made our way up to finish in 22nd, not too far behind one of the Targa Racing cars. The plans to run the turbo car failed so jumped in NB and qualified at a 1:12.19 - it just goes to show how fast the field was at this years event. It was a great weekend, probably one of the best I have had at a race track! Can't wait until the Winton 300, but in the meantime I must put a clutch in the car to run this weekend at Winton for the first Vic round