With the wet and wild weather settling in over Saturday night, the WA Sporting Car Club’s August drivers’ briefing on Sunday morning showed hope that the competitors would get a break in the weather for their racing, however as the first class set off on their qualifying laps, the wind and rain returned in force providing some challenging situations for all involved.
With only a very few competitors throwing in the towel to stay warm, the almost 120 strong field across 9 categories didn’t hold back from the time the first green flag was waved until the chequered flag at the end of the day.
After some minor offs while competitors adjusted to the cold, wet surface during the morning qualifying sessions, the rest of the day remained relatively incident free with no major delays.
The two feature races for the day were the Kostera Cup for the F1000 category and the Torque Trophy for the Street Car category.
A field of 5 F1000 competitors braved the conditions in their open wheel cars and were joined by 5 Radical SR3 drivers and the Formula Racing category to make up grid numbers. This essentially pitted the brand new technology of the F1000s against the older Formula Racing museum piece racing cars.
Arise Racing’s Adam Lisle looked fairly dominant in the F1000 single seater from the start, however privateer Stewart Burns pushed hard and took the final race win over Lisle. However this wasn’t enough to secure the Kostera Cup for Burns who fell short by 9 points.
In the Street Car category, despite a qualifying hiccup which saw Philip Crouse in a VW Polo and Wayne Hastie in his Nissan Pulsar dominate last year’s Torque Cup winner Andy Stevens, once the race pace was engaged it was clear to all that Andy’s pace would not be matched and he was a sure thing for the Trophy again this year.
Andy’s pace was so great, that he managed to lap all but two of the Improved Production Racing entrants who were on the same grid as the Street Cars.
The Formula Vee racing was tight again with wheel to wheel battles even in the wet occurring frequently. The Welsh family fielded a team of three however in the final race with Connor and Bruce Welsh sitting on the rear of the grid, family loyalty was shown to be strong as both of them gave each other plenty of room to race until Connor eventually pulled clear of father Bruce. Meanwhile April Welsh comfortably sat ahead of her family members, but found herself in a tight a three way race for second with Andrew Lockett and Campbell Gow. She eventually took out the 2nd place position for the race and finished third for the day just one point behind Andrew Lockett in the 1200cc class.
Other categories racing included the metal monsters of the Holden HQ racing returning for the first time since March 2020 and driving safely, but still with complete disregard for spare parts availability. Mick Woodbridge took out the top step for the day in this category.
Also joining him on the top step was Ron Moller in Sports Sedans, Josh Matthews in Formula Ford and Barry Baltinas in the Improved Production Car category.
QUOTES
WASCC Chair of the Competition & Events Committee – Peter Dyball
“Its great to see such a strong entry list today with the weather being how it is and to still get the number of people out here plus the officials.”
“Everyone is keeping their head together and giving a good level of competition. The wet track adds a level of complexity.”
Kostera Cup Winner – Adam Lisle
“I’m really proud to bring this one home. The mechanics worked really hard on the setup in challenging conditions. It wasn’t easy with the car moving underneath me.”
“The cars held up well especially in the last race where it was wet dry, wet dry around the track in the last race.”
“Stewart Burns did a great job today, he drove really well, drove consistently. In that last race he made me work for it.”
Torque Trophy Winner – Andy Stevens
“It is fantastic to win today, especially after all the hard work the boys have done during the week to get the car back up and running during the week. It is huge.”
“In the first and second race I was nowhere while it was wet, the wheels were spinning up everywhere. The front wheel drives kept pulling away from me. I knew I wouldn’t catch them in the wet but luckily it slowly dried up over the course of the race.”
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