beowulf wrote:I have been offline for a few days, it has been interesting catching up with comments from the festival.
Congratulations to Kenny. He deserved the honour and certainly drove very well. Next year Bathurst! I would have thought that there were still plenty of people and manufacturers whom deserve a festival. Scott Dixon, arguably the best driver NZ has produced. Ford, Colin Giltrap, etc, etc.
I did not enjoy the meeting. Poor organisation, some drivers whose cheque books are bigger than their ability who only come out once a year. I would love to see some drivers being told to put their cars on the trailer and come back when they know how to drive on a race track. I got driven off the track going around the outside of a Formula Pacific in turn one. He had wings and slicks and 200hp. I have treaded tyres, no wings and about 120hp. Next time I will report it to the officials instead of talking to the driver concerned.
The new track I found featureless and apart from the double B corner not easy to find brake and turn in points. But it was the same
for all cars.
On the subject of dummy grid identification I know of several drivers who have hopped in a mates car and gone out and raced. One had the misfortune to break down and coast to a stop in front of the Steward of the meeting!!
The grid marshals do a great job, but all they see are cars and numbers. It would help if grid numbers were displayed on the dummy grid.
Retrieving broken cars takes far too long. Use quad bikes or similar positioned around the track. Hook onto a broken car, drag it to a safe place and at the end of the next race take it back to the pits.
My comments probably haven't helped much, but it was not a memorable meeting.
Beowulf
Very hard not to agree with you Beowulf, especially with the vehicle recovery time delays. Each year I go, and each year the same problems or mistakes arise or are made. There doesn't seem to be anyone looking at how to improve the efficiency of the ruling of the meetings. For the supposed premier meeting of the year, it's frustrating that they can't seem to get such basic things right or at least better. If it was a club event you could probably accept these issues, but not for the biggest event of the year run by supposedly the best there is.
When the likes of HD are taking over the running and promoting of meetings, and especially with the jacking up of entry fees ( not only HD related ), I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a more professional product for your entry fee $. They all say the increase in entry fees is to cover the "safety levy", but what does the levy actually cover that we didn't have before, and how has anything improved since this levy was introduced? Cars out in the wrong races, and people driving their mates' car, is going backwards in the safety stakes, not increasing them.
Sorry for derailing your thread Ray. Great photos from Leadfoot, I will have to get down there one year.
