LCQ DTC Lakeside – Mother’s Day

Story and photos by Cris Johansen.

Motorsport defines a very wide range of activities and attracts just as broad a spectrum of participants. Mother’s Day 2021 at Lakeside demonstrated this brilliantly with The True Street Car Club of QLD enjoying the Lakeside circuit while the Lotus Club QLD and Paul Stokell’s Yokohama Tarmac Challenge Series made use of the Driver Training Centre.

The cars taking part in the Street Car Club event were at opposite ends of the motor sport spectrum to the DTC entrants with ours being at the light weight, nimble and relatively low powered end compared to their large and powerful street cars that, at their best avoid corners and had, in most cases, at least twice as many cylinders as the DTC cars, many times more horsepower and certainly not much more practical than our little toys. Despite the many differences between the two events, everyone enjoyed a full day of motorsport to their own taste and enjoyed using their cars in the manner in which they were intended to make the most of a great day of driving.

As is usual for the part of the county in Autumn the weather was close to perfect and, despite a few folk giving priority to their mothers, there was a good field of 26 cars that allowed for plenty of runs for us all.

Gideon did his usual great job of setting up the course and timing gear, and Jason helped out with his great portable marquee to keep the sun off the computer screen and time keepers.

Timed runs got underway at 9am and everyone managed 8 runs on the short circuit prior to the lunch break. Whilst the field shrank a bit after lunch, the afternoon drivers managed 7 runs on the longer layout.

Gideon Street impressed on both layouts with the quickest Lotus with a 46.692 in the morning and a 54.631 in the afternoon. Gideon’s times were only beaten by Jason McGarry in his super quick Caterham, and demonstrate that Gideon sure knows how to steer his mostly stock Exige.

Other than the Lotus brigade there was interest in the Andrew Row Dominator TS400 that was double entered by Andrew and Bridie, however a clutch failure put a premature end to their day and we are yet to see the true potential of that track car as yet. Once sorted I’m sure that it will be very competitive. There were also some other cars from the Paul Stokell group that were great to watch and listen to, with one of the best being the MacLeod’s double entered Yaris GR that put on a great show and makes it clear that Toyota have not lost the passion for affordable and great fun sports cars.

Thanks for the great day to all those who took part and assisted in running the event, and we look forward to the next round in July.

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