Winners at Alfa 10 Hour Relay

17 October 2024 / Story by Stewart Temesvary, Photos by John Karayannis

The weekend of 12th and 13th October 2024 saw 15 drivers from the MX-5 Club of NSW and their pit crew travel to Winton, Victorian to compete in the 2024 Alfa Club 10 Hour Regularity Relay. The teams were:

Panorama Mountain Men
Drivers: Sean Byers, David Johnson, Stewart Temesvary and Glenn Thomas
Pit Crew: David Lawler, Gaynor Lawler and Paul Byers

Just Regular Guys
Drivers: John Karayannis, Dan Szwaj, Matt Tarrant, Lou Iezzi and Jamie Martin
Pit Crew:  Heather Koorey, Gai Tarrant and Andrew Alexander

MomentuMX5
Drivers: Phil Reid, Craig Franklin, Michael Tarrant, Graeme Tierney and Greg Unger
Pit Crew:  Cathy Combes, Phil Donnelley and Kathryn Burton

Ian Combes and Neil Tribe were seconded to compete in teams from the MX-5 Club of Victoria and Tasmania.

The 2024 event was in the form of a 10 hour relay, with the first four hours run on Saturday afternoon and the balance of the event run on Sunday.

At the end of competition on Saturday afternoon the Panorama Mountain Men team were in second place with Just Regular Guys in 10th place and MomentuMX5 in 17th place.

Sunday morning saw competition resume at 8:30am but shortly after the event was red flagged due to the control tower losing all power (due to a planned outage by the local electricity authority). With the help of one competitor, who had a generator in the back of his ute, the event resumed a little over an hour later. The officials extended the finish by 1 hour meaning the event was still close to 10 hours of competition.

With no progressive results throughout the day on Sunday it was anyone's guess as to how our teams had finished.

At the presentation ceremony, last year's winners from the Alfa Club took out 3rd place. By process of elimination it was apparent that the top two places were taken by Panorama Mountain Men and Just Regular Guys but it was unclear as to which way round they finished. Eventually it was announced that Just Regular Guys finished second and Panorama Mountain Men had won the event by a very narrow margin.

For the Mountain Men, the win meant they completed a double, winning both the 2024 Victorian relays (Sandown and Winton) and now have 4 wins and 2 seconds in the last 6 starts at the Alfa event at Winton.

For the MX-5 Club of NSW it was a great achievement to have teams taking the top two spot in the event.

The margin between the top two teams ended up being less than 10 seconds after almost 10 hours of competition. For the Just Regular Guys this was a fantastic comeback after being 10th place after 4 hours. It is also their 2nd podium at the Alfa 10hr, after finishing 3rd in 2022.

From an individual driver point of view, out of the 114 drivers competing, John Karayannis was the best performer with Sean Byers in 2nd place, Dan Szwaj 9th, Stewart Temesvary 12th, Matt Tarrant 20th, Craig Franklin 24th and Glenn Thomas 26th.

All the teams had a great time and enjoyed the camaraderie at this event.