I went to Bathurst this Easter for the 2012 Motor Festival held at Mount Panorama, Bathurst, Australia. I was hopeful that it would be a case of 3rd time lucky as the previous two times I'd been there I had been unable to drive the car home! However, I was at least fortunate enough to get 99% of my allotted laps in both those times with the car only breaking down at the very end (1st time was the clutch which I put down to driver error and the 2nd time a broken earth wire - a 50 cent part but very difficult to diagnose!).
I was competing in the Regularity which was being run by the NSW Road Racing Club. The idea is to nominate a laptime which you think you can get consistently. Points are then added as you get further away from your nominated time. Going quicker than the nominated time is penalised twice as harshly as going slower - this encourages you to nominate a time which you think is achievable but not too easy to achieve. Well, that's the theory anyway - I nominated a 2 min 55 sec time based on the best I achieved last year. To put that into perspective the quickest a V8 Supercar has lapped the circuit is around 2 min 6 sec - quite a gap but they do have 3.5x more power than the 172!
However, this year they bunched the field more closely together at the start which meant that there was more traffic than previously (ie easier to get stuck behind someone slower or having to let someone quicker through). This made it much more difficult to get a clean run and therefore achieve the nominated time - that's my excuse anyway! I did match it a couple of times and in the last session I got quite close to it for all 4 laps which had me in 4th position for that run - in that session I also got my best time for the circuit of just under 2 min 55. Overall, over the 4 sessions I wasn't as consistent as that but did ok and placed 11th overall out of 50 competitors which is a reasonable effort. The 172 also did a personal best of 210 km/h (130mph) down Conrod Straight!
I'm driving a 172 and the white 200 you can see in some of the footage is a full race-spec Cup Racer. Would love to have a go in that!
At the end of the day I had an absolute blast driving this circuit again - it's not something that's easily done given it's a public road so it is a real privilege just to be able to drive around it as fast as you can!
Thankfully it was 3rd time lucky too as I was able to drive the Clio back home after the event
Anyway, here's some footage taken with my new GoPro video camera. There's a bit of wind noise (especially on the external angle) - I mistakenly used the wrong enclosure for the camera but know now for next time.
Hope you enjoy.
Cheers
Nath
A mix of footage over the 3 days:
http://youtu.be/up0TmkZ_PGA
A full lap of the circuit in-car:
http://youtu.be/iORr_LgsauI
A full lap of the circuit from the drivers side external:
http://youtu.be/A35OIV6MVb4
I was competing in the Regularity which was being run by the NSW Road Racing Club. The idea is to nominate a laptime which you think you can get consistently. Points are then added as you get further away from your nominated time. Going quicker than the nominated time is penalised twice as harshly as going slower - this encourages you to nominate a time which you think is achievable but not too easy to achieve. Well, that's the theory anyway - I nominated a 2 min 55 sec time based on the best I achieved last year. To put that into perspective the quickest a V8 Supercar has lapped the circuit is around 2 min 6 sec - quite a gap but they do have 3.5x more power than the 172!
However, this year they bunched the field more closely together at the start which meant that there was more traffic than previously (ie easier to get stuck behind someone slower or having to let someone quicker through). This made it much more difficult to get a clean run and therefore achieve the nominated time - that's my excuse anyway! I did match it a couple of times and in the last session I got quite close to it for all 4 laps which had me in 4th position for that run - in that session I also got my best time for the circuit of just under 2 min 55. Overall, over the 4 sessions I wasn't as consistent as that but did ok and placed 11th overall out of 50 competitors which is a reasonable effort. The 172 also did a personal best of 210 km/h (130mph) down Conrod Straight!
I'm driving a 172 and the white 200 you can see in some of the footage is a full race-spec Cup Racer. Would love to have a go in that!
At the end of the day I had an absolute blast driving this circuit again - it's not something that's easily done given it's a public road so it is a real privilege just to be able to drive around it as fast as you can!
Thankfully it was 3rd time lucky too as I was able to drive the Clio back home after the event
Anyway, here's some footage taken with my new GoPro video camera. There's a bit of wind noise (especially on the external angle) - I mistakenly used the wrong enclosure for the camera but know now for next time.
Hope you enjoy.
Cheers
Nath
A mix of footage over the 3 days:
http://youtu.be/up0TmkZ_PGA
A full lap of the circuit in-car:
http://youtu.be/iORr_LgsauI
A full lap of the circuit from the drivers side external:
http://youtu.be/A35OIV6MVb4
