an A1 day

The Kiwi and Chinese Cars

It was an excellent day at Eastern Creek - Andrew, Lachy and I went along to see round 6 of the 07/08 A1GP season. It was a full on program with Formula 3 followed by Aust GT, followed by Supersport 600s, then a 20 min A1GP sprint race, more F3, Historic racing, GT again, then the feature 70min race.

The weather held off until mid distance in the sprint race then did the cats and dogs thing until halfway through the feature race. We were in the stands in the downgrid lower corner opposite pole position but the rain being blown in at 45 degrees drove us into ponchos which protected us better than a $5 plastic bag ought to. Ear protection was useful even if I am in training for Iron Maiden next week - the A1s were louder than than I remember the Indycars on the coast a few years back.


The sprint race saw the Kiwi car finishing 2nd after starting 4th. A gentle rain started on about lap 8 of 14 and a bunch of cars including Great Britain came in for wets about then but the race distance and amount of rain didn't quite make it pay off for them. Duval in the French car pretty much controlled it from the front, and the Canadian car drove like a looney to get 3rd. The track was so close to full wet at the end that I reckon if the race had been two laps longer the top ten wouldn't have been there.

The feature race was initially an exercise in aquaplaning and settled down into an order of the idiots, the brave, the careful, and those mostly spinning round and round at 300kmph. The exception being the South African car which just disappeared off the front - the guy was awesome, his braking marker for turn one was halfway to turn two. The kiwi car started from pit row after stalling on the siting lap (doing a simulated race-start round the back of the circuit - they had been on pole), but battled back thirteen places to finish 9th. Australia came off 14th to finish fifth and GB had an up and down race to finish 3rd off from a grid place of 3rd. Eight hours of petrol fumes set us up nicely for another box of KK and a slab of Guinness.

Thanks again to Andy, Keryn and wee Georgina for a brilliant day, and very fun week. I wouldn't normally include a picture of a Yamaha, but two of them spent an amazing amount of time upside down about 100 feet off the ground with the riders getting off and baking a cake or something in mid-air. Bloody awesome. Bloody idiots.