Mt Cotton Hillclimb – Jan 2016

By Shane Murphy, pictures by Dick Reynolds, Shane & Jenny Murphy.

With the Christmas New year period behind us and all the family duties out of the way it was time to turn our attention back to the “Main Game”.

This year promises to be a full of social and competition events and the Mt Cotton Tune and Test day seemed like a logical move to get some track time in before the season proper starts.

The last weekend of January loomed and so did Brisbane’s sometimes crazy weather, and despite the now standard prediction that the we are about to be blown and washed away, over 40 cars of all makes and sizes lined up for the afternoon.

Lotus Club Queensland was well represented by Dick Reynolds, Shane Murphy, Zaid Latif, Jon Young and Daryl Wilson. It was good to see new club member Zaid take the start line in his 2005 Exige S2.

Mal Kelson and Jason McGarry were last minute non-starters; citing heat, humidity and rain as potential problems.

The whole pits sweltered under the sun awaiting the drivers briefing and kick off, whilst the humidity grew and the storm clouds intensified, all eyes were on the sky.

Jenny Murphy was charged with recording our times, and apart from one of two lapses of concentration diligently sat in the shade taking notes and offering a range of advice on split times and general driving standards.

The whole field got in a run, then the rain arrived, luckily we all survived run two in wet, apart from Jon who, most sensibility sat the storm out, times were about 5 seconds a lap slower.

Pretty quickly the rain passed, however the heat started to take a toll on the drivers, except of course for the Exige drivers amongst us (no names no pack drill) who just cranked up the air conditioning and powered through it, a pretty normal affair for those with roofs.

By mid-afternoon the heat had taken its toll on Daryl, who retired gracefully, however overall we managed six runs and lost 4 litres each of sweat.

For reasons of complete discretion we will not discuss in detail the amenities block incident, it was quickly put behind us in the spirit of team camaraderie.

Times tumbled; in between runs Jon and Dick experimented with tyre pressures and shock settings seeking a tenth here and a tenth there.

In the final wash-up the whole team was happy with their times.

As usual we had a great day with plenty of laughs, a cold beer at home that night finished of the weekend nicely.