By Shane Murphy. Pics by Shane & Jenny Murphy.
Round 4 of the Interclub Championship, the Porsche Club Sprints, took place at Morgan Park, Warwick.
Heading into this round, a huge expectation rested on the shoulders of Club members to get Lotus back to the top of the championship table.
Clearly the Morgan Park Sprint meeting offered a unique set of circumstances for us to ‘brain’ the Porsche Club at their home event.
Evidence of this fiery energy was the number of Porsches entered. Like ants they crawled out of every nook and cranny, all shiny and ready to rumble.
The poor souls were unprepared for the Lotus onslaught. Geoff Noble, Matt Plowman, Garry Pitt and Phil Hart provided the masterclass, plus a supporting ensemble of Shane Murphy and Johan Rensenbrink.
We won’t even talk about Jason in his Caterham batting for the other side on this occasion.
A couple of late ‘non-starters’ meant that our team was running lean on quantity but with intense quality.
As you can well imagine Saturday was predicted to be very cool, and when the gates opened at 6.30am (go figure) the reality of Warwick set in, with the temperature hovering around a notional –25c, well that’s what it felt like.
Over the course of the seven runs, Geoff showed his class and was never touched, lap after lap at the head of the field, short or long course, and showing his contempt of the Porsches, not a driving suit in sight.
Matt rolled out in what can only be described as his monster carbon Time Attack Exige, cracking and banging its way out of the pits, mouths were hanging open at the very sight of this black and green full-on racing monster. The machine is so complex a door bitch was required to get it under way, thanks old fella!
As usual Garry Pitt was unstoppable in his red machine, Mr Consistent and with a PB set during the day fulfilling his Club duties.
Johan attacked the course with some trepidation being on his first outing at Morgan Park, plenty of tyre squealing on turn 1 indicated his commitment to getting those times down.
Phil Hart battered away at his times, quickly getting into the 1 minute 20’s, placing him solidly in the top percentile of group times, no cuts today Phil, obviously the homework had been done on this occasion.
The green machine performed well, consistently at the pointy end of the old car leaderboard, the driver giving her a bit of encouragement at every corner. It’s a shame that some of the cars with big accelerators but with drivers with little braking and cornering bottle were hogging the race lines and kept times below capability.
Club troopers Mal and Daryl travelled to Warwick to wave the flag, later in the morning love birds Marty and Suzanne graced the pits with their presence and breezy cheer.
Plenty of other drama during the day with a Lambo having a small under bonnet fire whilst on the dummy grid and a BMW getting fully alight leaving his garage.
Another sight to behold was the red Porsche sitting in the table drain at the corner of Kenilworth Street and Old Stanthorpe Road, pretty clearly thought he would not stop at the t-junction, perhaps not the fastest way home after a long day at the track.
Well done to the Porsche Club for a great event, looking forward to seeing the final result sheet to see how we went. Bring on Round 5, our home event at the Lakeside DTC.
