2015 State Round 2 – Sandown

The Nail in the Coffin

Report by Chris Ralph. Pics courtesy Phil Wisewould.

Ah, the ignomy. With a mere nine Group N starters, the organizers had little choice but to bundle us in with another class…erk, Hyundai Excels. Eeeww!

To be fair they drove very well, there were many more of them and they all seemed to be having more fun than we were because of their numbers and that they are all like-powered cheap shitters in a controlled category at around $5000 or so. No defections to that category please!

So who were the lonesome nine? The two Darrens, Collins and Smith, in Camaro and XY GT respectively, resumed their State Race Series battle from Round 1 at Phillip Island, with exactly the same result in each confrontation. Daniel van Stokrom gets ever faster in the Torana and was the third fastest car although his hairy gorilla grip was again too much for the gear lever, wrenching it off in the last race and handing an unlikely and undeserved podium to Yr Hmble Edtr who had been circulating worrying, amid the yawning, about the unnecessary race minutes being put on his engine in a long and seemingly pointless race.

Tony Gilfuis again had the red Capri in play, but was sidelined by a head gasket in the second race, the same ailment striking Nathan Gordon in qualifying.

Behind the editor qualified the Lotus Cortina of Rod Barrett, the Jag of Phil Pearmain and the Cortina of Brian Deveson, of whom only the Jag was going at the end of the weekend.

On Sunday afternoon the lonesome nine had reduced to an embarrassed four. This was it. The committee had been thinking about a calendar shake-up as the low numbers at both state and historic meetings were threatening to affect us in both areas of racing. Revolution was at hand and you can read all about that in another article.