Motorkhana Round 2, 2011
Held on the 22nd of May, Round 2 of the SA Motorkhana series provided great results for Touge Alliance.
The day started out at 8:00am with the club meeting at Glen Osmond McDonalds for a hearty pre-event breakfast. Sam was the first on the scene with the red S14, settling indoors that chilly morning to await other club members. By 8:30, the club proceeded up the freeway with a brief stopover at a service station to complete final checks on the vehicle.
Upon arrival at Monarto, registration, scrutineering and practice runs. The event truely kicked off at 10:30 after the safety induction. At this point Sam was pleased to run into Kat and Justin, recent Touge Alliance additions, with their Cefiro. Placed in classes C and D respectively, the S14 and Cefiro went to town on the courses laid out in front of them. During a run the Cefiro experienced some smokey troubles with fears of a blown turbo; this resolved itself on its own however with the car making it through all the courses. The 200sx was not in blissville either, a sloppy rear subframe severly hamstrung its ability to stay precise on the course; a gradual lowering of tyre pressures throughout the day from ~38psi to ~25psi was Sam's attempts to tame the vehicle did little to help unfortunately.
The weather conditions on the day could be best described as intermittent with light rain dotting the courses for some of the competitor's runs. However Sam reports that he has the good fortune of getting a dry run at least each of the four courses laid out in front of him. Despite the subframe woes Sam still managed to take 2nd in Class, a hairsbreadth in front of the 200sx in 3rd place. Kat and Justin fared very well for their first time, with Justin pulling a DPI of over 90% (the time taken over the entire event versus the track records for each course) - very impressive and competitive!