ICC Rd 2 Porsche Club Sprints

ICC Round 2 Porsche Club Sprints Morgan Park Raceway 10th March 2019

Story and photos by Shane Murphy

Round 2 of this year’s Interclub Challenge was the Sprint Day at Morgan Park Raceway, organised by our friendly rivals at the Porsche Club of Queensland.

This Round was going to be a points problem for our club. Without the official results at hand, my guess is that after Round 1 Lotus Club Queensland would have been at the pointy end of the scorecard, however for a number of factors our attendance at Warwick was compromised.

Fronting up on Saturday morning, the team consisted of myslef in the Green Machine and Steve Blackie in the Off-White machine.

Steve and Susan chose the option of a boutique Warwick accommodation experience on Friday night whilst Jen and I jumped up at 4am on Saturday, had a cup of coffee, patted the dog and sauntered down to the track to arrive right on the designated time of 7.00am, ready for the paperwork and scrutineering to begin.

Luckily for both Steve and I we had our trusted pit crews with us, Susan and Jen. Boy racers need their support and of course someone to brag to (in my case) and someone to offer encouragement to go faster (in Steve’s case). In Steve’s defence it was his first run at Morgan Park and whilst exciting, the layout can be a little daunting at first glance.

The overall field consisted of 40 to 50 cars, dominated of course by Porsche, as the event coincided with the Porsche Club’s two-day event over the weekend.

The cars were sorted into four groups, Steve in Group 3 and myself in Group 4. The morning consisted of four runs over Course K, the long circuit and two runs in the afternoon over Course E.

During the day I battled the times with my rival from the Noosa Hillclimb, Bob Bear in his little Alfa Romeo, encouragingly for me I managed to pip him on the day by 0.033 of a second on the longer K circuit and 1.25 seconds on the shorter run. A great result I must say.

Steve duked it out all day long with a couple of very pretty Porsches and in run 5, he was the fastest in his group. Steve was over the moon with his improvement – practice and a little encouragement go a long way, just ask Susan.

It was a hot day and as we approached the last run, I think everyone had had enough, so all ended well. No major incidences on the day, a couple of our Bavarian comrades left their oil payload on the track, but largely incident free, much to the delight of all.

Kevin Vedelago and his team ran an exceptionally well planned and executed event – congratulations and well done.

Let’s get to Round 3 of the ICC.