2017 Phillip Island 6 Hour Regularity - Driver needed!

30 April 2017 / David Lawler

Each year, a number of teams of MX-5 Club members travel to Phillip Island for the annual 6 Hour regularity relay event. Each team typically has 4 drivers, usually each with their own car, and also a number of friends and/or relatives as support and pit crew. The event takes place over a weekend, with practice on the Saturday and the event on Sunday. This year it is on 29th and 30th July.

Stewart Temesvary is again organising entries for the club teams, and due to a couple of late withdrawals, he has a spot open for a driver in one of those teams. If you might be interested, please keep reading.

Stewart has supplied the following points as information about the event.

· Saturday practice where each driver will get at least 1 hour of track time and first timers will get an extra 40 minute session on top of that.

· During the first timers session on Saturday you can take an experienced driver with you to get tuition of lines and braking points etc.

· Sunday is the event, running for 6 hours from 10am with only one driver on each team on the track at a time.  Each driver should get at least 3 sessions of 30 minutes

· In a 4 car team each driver’s entry fee will be in the region of $605.00.  While this is not cheap, it is very good value for money when you consider each driver will get about 2.5 to 3 hours of track time.  It certainly makes the long trip to Phillip Island worthwhile.

· As there are 50 teams there is usually 50 cars on the track at the one time.

· Some video footage I took at the event a few years ago from a camera in standard NB8A MX-5 is available at http://youtu.be/cdmMG4AUZYw

· Here is a link ta an articles about last year’s events, which might help to explain more.

    http://nsw.mx5.com.au/news/2016-victorian-6-hour-relay

· Socially it is a great event with about 30 of our club members being there and enjoying the event together.

· There will be plenty of experienced drivers there to guide, advise and instruct new people.

· In 2014 this event was awarded the CAMS Victoria “Event of the Year”

· For those who have never done Phillip Island it is arguably the best track in Australia and is very well suited to the MX-5, being a track with a series of flowing high speed corners with only 2 slower corners (turn 4 “Honda” and turn 10 “MG” at the bottom of Lukey Height).

· For many of the drivers who have competed in previous years this event is one of the first events to go on their motorsport calendar each year. 

- If it sounds intimidating, don’t let that put you off.  Last year we had one driver compete and his only track experience prior to that was one or two club track days.  He handled the event admirably and is now hooked on the event and is running again this year. 

 

Each year, entries for this event are full within 12 hours of opening, so it is important for each team to have their entry paperwork ready to go when entries open. Stewart expects that to happen within 2 weeks, so if you are interested it is important to move quickly.

If you are interested or want more details, please contact Stewart ASAP at regularity_relay@mx5.com.au or on his mobile phone 0414 516 346.