It seemed to me that it would be a huge jump from Club Super Sprints to racing and I wondered if there was a slightly “softer” way to make the transition. I had heard about the AROCA 6 Hour Relay Classic held each year at Eastern Creek (AROCA stands for Alfa Romeo Owners Club Australia). It is a relay race which means that a team of drivers (a minimum of three and a maximum of six) and their cars compete for either a line honours or a handicap win.
The race was 6 months away and I didn’t give it much thought and besides, I didn’t feel that I was anywhere near ready to race. As the months passed, lap times were starting to come down but more importantly they were beginning to show signs of consistency.
A month before the event, I sent an email to a couple of club members who seem to be up for anything when it comes to the track – Anthony Kosseris and Indiran Padayachee. Both Anthony Kosseris and Indiran Padayachee came down to Phillip Island a few months before. We were all complete rookies when it came to racing and after a short email exchange, we had our three driver minimum. I thought that if I were to go the effort of putting a team together then we needed to at least try to finish on the podium. I did some research into the race and discovered that a Lotus team had won it the year before (2005) having completed 177 laps on a dry to wet track and that the average lap times of each car were between 1:46 – 2:10. As I went back through the Natsoft archives, I could not see a Porsche team win since 2002 when James and Theo Koundouris (together with David Guigni) won the race having completed 191 laps. I thought that if no other Porsche teams turn up, we could win!!!
I pumped up the team’s hopes with a couple of enthusiastic emails and then set out to fill the remaining team spots. I figured that we would need an experienced racer to clean up the mess made by the rookies and a number of names were put forward and subsequently contacted. We ended up the following team:
Team Manager: Wayne Jones.
Radio: John Ramage and Amelia Jones.
Driver A: David Jellins – ’04 GT2
Driver B: David Reynolds – ’04 GT2
Driver C: Aaron Zerefos – ’04 Turbo X50
Driver D: Indiran Padayachee – ’04 GT3
Driver E: Anthony Kosseris – ’03 GT3 Cup Car
Driver F: David Reynolds – ’03 GT3 Cup Car
The team manager advised us to “cross-enter” David Reynolds in two cars with a view to having him both start and finish the race for the team. We were able to do this as we had five drivers instead of the allowed six maximum.
Qualifying for the race consisted of merely driving six laps of the circuit on the Saturday. Once all drivers in our team had completed their minimum six lap qualifying stint, we (together with the team manager) then nominated our own minimum lap times for the race. The race rules stated that no car is allowed to go under their own nominated lap time or 98 seconds (1:38) – whichever is the greater. If a driver goes under this time, a one lap penalty applies. Another reason for nominating a lap time is to allow handicap placings to be determined. A couple of our drivers needed more practice on slicks than their six laps provided for and they were ordered back out until their lap times came down. Indiran Padayachee almost ran out of fuel getting accustomed to the new tyre.
Our team manager had instructed us to be at the track nice and early the following morning before the race. The 10 am start came around very quickly and we were off and racing before we knew it. David Reynolds had gained a 40 second lead within the first 20 minutes of the race however the safety car was called out and our lead was wiped away. Our team enjoyed the lead for most of the day however “Team 20 Something” took the lead briefly in the 2nd hour of the race. I spent most of the day interfering with the team manager’s job and in the minutes before each driver went out, telling each driver not to spin under any circumstances. Naturally, I was the only one who spun. I won’t make excuses however if anyone is thinking of running Cup Car tyres (with different front – back rolling diameters) on anything but a Cup Car then forget about it! I managed not to hit anything however the unfortunate incident cost the team around 15 seconds.
There are some drivers who say that Super Sprints are tougher than racing because each lap in a Super Sprint is like a qualifying lap. I can testify that the nervous energy associated with the drama, excitement, anxiety and cost of your first race will make a Super Sprint feel like a Sunday drive.
Every one of the rookies put in personal best Eastern Creek lap times during the race and it was only during the last hour of the race that our all Porsche team started to show signs of a clear lead. The final 15 minutes of the race seemed to take forever with the entire team huddled around the small timing screen hoping that David Reynolds would bring home a win without any dramas.
The chequered flag finally fell at the six hour mark and we had won the race! Our team had completed 194 laps – three laps ahead of the next team (Team 20 Somethings) and four laps ahead of the team after that (Lotus by Jeff).
We were all thrilled with the win and there was a small presentation after the race. When I got home that evening, I paraded around the house flexing my biceps declaring that I knew what it felt like to be Schumacher. This feeling of elation lasted for well over a week and when reality finally returned, it began to dawn upon me just how difficult it would be to repeat our performance in 2007.