Saturday saw another painfully early start in order to reach Wakefield Park Raceway in time for the start of the first Porsche Club NSW Supersprint of 2012. I have high aspirations this year so made it down early, swapped my semis on and quickly consumed some caffeine before the Driver’s Briefing.
The track was wet despite several creative counter measures as Goulburn had effectively been under water for the past two weeks. The hilly landscape at Wakie means water will continue to rise up out of the ground long after the clouds have disappeared.
So with that in mind I cautiously headed out onto the track…. well that lasted all of about 3 laps and before long I was pushing hard so as to secure a spot in a fast group which would hopefully not hold me up later on in the day. Turn two was VERY tricky… the standing water meant that the car would simply stop turning and go straight ahead. This is not ideal! After setting a decent lap then spinning on the aforementioned corner I returned to pit lane for a small tyre pressure adjustment and to check the group allocations.
To my surprise I ended up in Group 4 – in the company of some pretty serious race cars including a GT3. I had a great moment where I let the GT3 pass me on the straight, then hounded him for two laps – closing significant distance through the top of the circuit. What a rush! Such a shame the video data from this session was corrupted.
I ended the day with a best time of 1.15.4, o.3 of a second off my PB. I was happy with this time considering turn two was wet all day and I would have been losing at least 0.7-1 seconds slowing down for that section before the hill. I can smell the 14’s! The time I set put me three seconds ahead of the next fastest car in my class and I am anticipating being close to the top of the driver’s leaderboard when points are announced. Feels good man.
Also got to test out my new 70-200 2.8L, which I am VERY happy with – check the photos and judge for yourself. Panning at longer focal lengths is still a challenge, but something to be worked on!
The cover photo was taken by Tiit Saul – it’s one of my favourites of the 944! Nice guy who takes a mean photo. Funny that I added him on Flickr & saw he’d already snapped me at the Circuit Club day in January!
As always, more photos on my Flickr.
БJ 