2012
Winton Festival of Speed
Lon
track 11-12 August 2012
The second
weekend of August saw the VHRR’s third long-track meeting, the
Winton Festival of Speed. About 270 cars; racing, sports racing, production
sports car, touring car, and standard road cars took part in on track
action.
After an accident prone race, take two for
the combined Groups M, O, V & FF grid on Saturday, Tim Blanchard
did grandpa proud by taking a clean-sweep of wins for the weekend
in the family’s Van Dieman RF88. The battles were fought behind
though, with a hard fought battle for third place between David Hardman
(Elfin 600 FF) and Nick Bennett (who has switched to a sister-model
vehicle of the Blanchard car), crossing the line 1 tenth apart. Foggy
was in his element in commentary watching the next generation takeover.
Using my ‘road kill’ hat to warm
the tyres of Peter Strauss’ Brabham BT11A seemed to help out
for Sunday morning’s race where he was the first of the Groups
M&O racing cars home, ahead of the concours-prepared Elfin Mono
of Norm Falkner.
Group S production sports cars contributed
to the event with some good numbers, allowing the grid to be split
into two – with an Sa & Sb grid, and separating of the Sc
grid.
This paved the way for some exciting racing
in the earlier era race with dices between Sa and Sb cars all throughout
the field. Laurie Burton (TVR Tuscan) stomped away with the win Sunday
morning from Jackson (Austin-Healey 3000) & Bartley (Sprite),
while outside the top-three, the battle was on with Brian Duffy doing
the A/H 3000 camp happy outdoing the photo finish between Brian Weston
(MG Midget) & Andrew Begg (Porsche 911).
In the Sc races, Michael Bryne had an uncharacteristic
off-track excursion in the Super 7 S4 while battling the Porsche contingent,
but in race two made up ground and fought his way back into second
place behind someone who’s not accustomed to not be at the front,
Geoff Morgan. Chris La Rosa took to Spencer Harrison’s 911 like
he’d being driving the car for years, but was pipped to the
final podium place by Rohan Little who put on a stellar performance
all weekend.
Entries were down for the more modern categories,
which was evident in the P, Q & R event. It was a battle of the
March entries; with Kim Jones (80A) & Andrew Makin (73B) swapping
wins (although neither hoped for the swap).
The organisers worked with the programme in
the lead-up & changed the Group N fixture, as they were grouped
together instead of an over & under 3-litre field, and the Saturday
Top 10 shootout was lessened to a Top 5. Sunday’s Rose City
Touring Car Trophy race covered 20 laps, and by the end was a much
strung-out affair with Michael Hibbert (Charger) taking out a huge
win from Angelo Tarato (Torana) & Cam Worner (Falcon).
A seemingly similar non-attendance by the other
major drawcard with the 10 entries taking to the track in the Group
C & A event. Three did not survive the 15 lap ‘pit-stop’
race in Sunday’s feature time, including David Towe who expired
with smoke pouring from the front brake area in his M3. Mike Roddy
took a deserved win in the Jaguar XJS, miles ahead of the A9X Torana
of Steve Parrott & the Milton Seferis Commodore.
Talk around the paddock was that some of the
most interesting racing came from the J, K & L field, which was
dominated by Group L cars. Ken Bedgood did the Penrite clan proud
winning all three races across the weekend. Graeme Raper recovered
from missing the first race to finish in the top 10 on Sunday (gearbox
replacement Saturday night). The minor places on this podium changed
during all three races, displaying the fine racing shown, but it was
good to see Dick O’Keefe taking a second in the final.
There were two regularity events, plus an all-Porsche
one, and combined the two regular regularity events made up for a
vast portion of the entire event grid. Pete ffrench took out a mandatory
win for the weekend, but left it to the final, and I managed to leave
nominating a time to the final event!, and finished fifth, much to
my surprise.
