Words by Shane Murphy, pics by Shane and Jenny Murphy.
Just before the Christmas rush and as a prelude to our final meeting for 2018 i.e. the penultimate event for 2018, the committee decided that a great way to mix up our social spirit with a bit of competition was to host a karting and BBQ run.
The plan, well executed I might say, was to meet at the BP Yatala for a yak, cruise to “The Castaway Café“ for a coffee and then on through the cane fields to the Xtreme Karting facility on the Pimpama Jacobs Well Road for a BBQ and you guessed it, a karting session. For many, the niggle was, how would I go against my mates in a reasonably priced go kart!
Sadly, we had a casualty before we left the rendezvous point with Vyvyan stuck on the highway with his Elan entering “don’t go mode”, how very Lotus to stumble in the heat!
The quote of the day warbled out of Mal at coffee, sadly Daryl, Mal and I could not remember those sage words an hour later, you obviously had to be there, but believe me it was very witty.
With no other problems, we enjoyed the coffee, cakes and burgers (sorry Des) and headed off to Pimpama for our lunch – a good roll up of nearly forty punters.
The BBQ was sensational, the organisation was fantastic and after a big feed we concentrated on the briefing (no talking was allowed), donned helmets and gloves and hit the track.
Hell, those rev limiters are annoying, apparently some of the team were clearly not paying attention during the briefing as cars zipped by each other on the warm up lap and whilst under yellow flags.
Plenty of argy-bargy as you would expect, with some of the karts that were not “on it” being punted into the weeds, sorry Daryl.
Sam had wisely briefed Chrissy that you do not use the brakes, sadly for Chrissy she flew into the first corner and after three rotations ended up in the weeds, probably should have paraphrased that advice a little I suspect.
| Fastest times (using the full track) Competition | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Rowdy (Andrew Row) | 85.598 |
| 2. | Smurf (Sam Murphy) | 85.840 |
| 3. | EV (Evan Malloy) | 85.941 |
| 4. | Phart (Phil Hart) | 86.039 |
| 5. | Ace (Shane Murphy) | 86.477 |
| Fastest time (using half the track) Competition | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Daz (Daryl Wilson) | 65.666 (seriously Daryl) |
| Ladies Competition | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Bride (Bride Moran) | 89.478 |
| 2. | Chrissy (Chrissy Murphy) | 95.849 |
| 3. | Chuck (Charlotte Rol) | 103.15 |
Father and Son Combo Competition
The statistician in me is always looking for ways to analyse and understand the numbers. The best comparison I could muster and one which delivered the outcome I was looking for was to use the average of the average of all times of each of the paternal participant groups, low and behold the following table yielded a brilliant statistical outcome.
| Average of the average of all times of each of the paternal participant groups | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Sam and Shane | 91.498 |
| 2. | Andrew and George | 92.062 |
| 3. | Mitchell and Darryl | 94.581 |
| 4. | Aston and Wade | 96.472 |
| 5. | Daryl and Mal | 101.568 |
The final bit of trivia of course was the inventiveness or appropriateness of the chosen driver tags, as well as those mentioned above, we had; jasstv, PONY U, BLACKI, postie, Dags, Rusty, DESMO, lotman and blak, go figure, what a funny bunch we are.
Plenty of red faces after the 15-minute session, next time we should run the competition event with heats and a final, can’t wait.
