Mini 50
A Once in a
Lifetime Event
Melbourne
Trip Report By: John Beggs
The Victorian Mini Club and Tony Gray, the RC mini guru, organised a
one off meeting for minis only at the Victorian Mini Club's 50th
Anniversary of the Morris Mini. As it was a once in a lifetime meeting
and limited to 50 entries, including the gun mini drivers from around
the country, John Batich and I ventured over to race at the meeting.
We left sunny Hobart on the Friday and flew into Melbourne, a little too
late to get any track time in, so we ventured to our accommodation for
an easy laid back night.
Saturday:
The morning was wet. luckily it was
indoors on carpet, so it was off to the venue for an early start. After setting up
our pit area we had a practice run. Wow it was a tight but fun track to
race on. We tried numerous sets of tyres on the cars and made our
decision on what worked best for us.
We were pre graded into qualifying heats
for the first 3 qualifiers. I was
in Qualifier D and JB was in E. In my last run of the day I broke the
right steering knuckle so put the car away and went to the pub for a
feed. J B had a hassle free day with no breakages
Sunday:
After a relatively quiet night and more rain, We arrived at the track,
setup our pit and had a practice run. Fun with 15 cars on the track at
the time. The standings after the first day of qualifying were posted
and I was moved back into the E heat with JB for the last 2 qualifiers.
I had a set of tyres that we hadn't tried yet and noticed one of the
gun drivers had them on the front of his car, so decided to put them on
the front of my car. The other pair were thrown to JB to try and they
worked a treat. The cars were hooked up and ready to roll. We left them
on for the rest of the meeting.
After qualifying was over we had
both qualified for the E Final. I had qualified 35th and JB 36th out of
the 50 entries. Not bad for a couple of hacks from Tassie.
We
gridded up for our final and after starting from 6th and 7th on the
grid, I ended up finishing 1st and JB 2nd in our final. This gave me the
overall positions of 31st with JB finishing in 32nd overall. An
improvement on where we started and both had a personal best time to top
it off.
Overall it was a great event and we both would do it
again if given the chance, but I don't think we will be around for
another 50 years to race at the Mini 100.
It was a great experience and we both learnt so much about setting up
and racing these minis.
(Courtesy:
RC-Mini.Net - Thanks Tony)
Click here for Full Results
Pics By JB
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