I was made aware of this day by the people in the stall for the NSW Road Racing Club at the V8 Supercar finale at the Sydney Olympic Park. My entry into the day was my 1997 Holden Barina (also known as the Vauxhall or Opel Corsa). To prepare the car for the day I had a friend help wire up a tachometer since my car has only the 3 clock dashboard, installed a K&N panel air filter, removed all the non-essential objects from the car, did the normal 100,000km service, replaced the exhaust pipe from the midsection onwards, following the advice to overfill the oil, bought a certified helmet, and upped the regular tyre PSI by 5.
I arrived at the track a lot sooner than expected and got a chance to talk to a few people and look at what kind of cars people were bringing along. There was a great number of MX-5s on display, a couple of the new Toyota 86, more Skylines than expected, a reasonable number of Falcodores, and a lot of your ordinary everyman-drive-abouts. I used the extra time that I had to get my car passed by the scrutineers before the rest of my group turned up.
There were 114 participants in total and we were split into four different groups that ran on different time blocks throughout the day. I was designated the blue group, which was the second group to do the activities.
My session begun with the supersprint. Supersprint involves a number of cars sharing the track, not particularly racing but just working on their own personal best. It started with a detailed briefing about the marshalling of the event, a talk about the rules we must adhere to both on and around the track, an explanation of all the flags we might see, and a tour of the safety equipment that may need to be used during the day.
After I met my coach it was time to go on the track. I was the last car to be let onto the track.
Right away I caught up with the MG and Hyundai Lantra that went out before me since the Lantra wasn't exactly fast. On the second lap the MG and I were able to pass them and finally start to use a bit more of our speed. To my advantage, I used the time when I had the slow car in front of me to become familiar with the road.
I will admit to running my car a little too hard during the first stint. We were limited to doing 100km/h on the track for safety purposes, which is understandable since it is a very curvy section with some hairpins and off-camber corners. I drove around the track maxing out second gear and only using third when I needed that extra speed. Little Barina wasn't too happy with this and started to run on the hot side of things. The overfilling of the oil backfired on me at this point. As things got hot and the oil pressure increased I noticed a massive loss of power going up one of the hills and looked behind myself to see a giant wall of smoke.
All the other cars had to back off in case I had lost oil onto the road surface.
The extra oil had obviously heated up enough to expand up into the valves, pass through my cylinders, and get burned out through my exhaust pipe. It was like the smokescreen effect you'd get from a car in a 007 film. Jokes aside, I got cautioned to pit in because the marshals had fears I'd blown something up and may have spilled oil on the track. I explained myself when they reinspected my car and confirmed it was simply being burnt out of my pipe. This gave the officials some peace of mind and they allowed me back out for a second stint.
I had an MR2 on my tail for most of the second stint.
Some of my passengers have complained about the ride in my car being a bit stiff. It certainly might feel stiff on normal road driving the car still managed to roll quite a lot when being tossed into a corner at 100km/h. There was enough trouble inside my car just trying to stay in one place in my seat.
There was no repeat of the exhaust smoke during my second stint because I did the whole lot in third gear. The car still had enough power to deal with the elevation, it kept the engine a lot cooler and didn't overexcite the oil like it did the first time.
Here are some photos of other cars that James took during the day:
Motorkhana is a growing segment of motorsport that mainly involves driving around a placement of cones as fast as possible. It requires quite a bit of control. We would drive what is referred to as a Double Hat layout. It involves a right hand 360, a lot of left turns, and finishes with another right hand 360.
With the short wheelbase and amazing turning circle the Barina pulled off some pretty good times. Being front wheel drive probably helped too. All the FR cars really seemed to have a great amount of trouble getting any amount of grip on the wet concrete surface. If I had a longer first gear in this car it could have probably been better. There is really no time in motorkhana to change gear. My helmet was no longer required for motorkhana so Thomas decided to give it a try while I went sat through the briefing.
My times on the motorkhana were:
- 40.04
- 40.24
- 39.00
- 37.36
- 36.60
- 36.41
James recorded as much video of the motorkhana as possible before the battery in his camera decided it needed to retire.
I was extremely tired when I got home, but the Barina successfully managed to provided a great day out and made it back home again.
I would like to thank the officials, coaches, and volunteers that, through their support, helped make the day possible. I would also like to thank the friends and family of mine that came along as spectators and supporters on the day.
