Bob McMurray writes....
The good ladies and gentlemen who enable us all to go racing (because without them there would be no racing from Formula 1 to speedway) who make up the happy band of local marshals and officials here at Teretonga have assured me the area is experiencing a drought and no appreciable rainfall has been recorded since November last.
Well, it all arrived at once overnight and especially this morning.
The TRS tent floor area was flooded in areas and the pit lane was more suitable for jet sprint boats than the waiting Formula Fords
The rain eased after a while and practice on a wet track, a very wet track, began some hour and a half late.
Although, looking at the surrounding weather pattern some local guy named Noah is still hammering away at timber beams.
The minor damage to some of the race cars, including front wing repairs, steering arm replacements and the like, was fixed overnight with much of the gravel from the run off areas that came back to the paddock in the side pods of the errant vehicles returned from whence it came.
Another sidebar in the ‘personalities’ section here.
Another friend and ex-contemporary of mine, John Gentry, is here in the paddock lending some of his vast experience to the younger drivers and team personnel.
John has been involved in racing in the USA with Can-Am cars and our own Chris Amon, Formula 1 with ATS, Toleman, Benetton and Alfa Romeo, A1GP, Touring cars and the list goes on.
His first visit to New Zealand and he says he is incredibly impressed with the country and especially the TRS and the professionalism involved.
And this said standing in the rain and the cold wind of the Teretonga paddock area!!
Wet then for the first TRS practice / test session of the day.
I thought a time of 1m 5 or 6 seconds would be good for this session.
It took just ten minutes for the time of 1 minute and 3 seconds to appear on the timing monitors!
A few ‘offs’ and a bit of damage to the car of kiwi Chris Vlok, mainly suspension, but leaving his crew with a fair amount to do as the damage extended from front to rear.
Hannes van Asseldonk knocked his front right wheel askew and Puerto Rican driver Felix Serralles’s front wing had an argument with the tyre barrier. A TRS FT40 front wing will always lose that argument.
All this caused the session to be interrupted three times by the red flags but by and large all escaped relatively unscathed in atrocious conditions.
The local Warehouse store was raided by Steve Boyce, Motorsport Manager for TNZ, and he escaped with several pairs of gumboots in varied sizes and some very fetching colours. They were quickly snapped up and became the practical fashion of the day.
At three thirty an annual tradition took place.
An event called ‘The Herding of the Cats’.
More commonly known as the driver photo parade where all the drivers are required to have a still head and shoulders photograph taken as well as a filmed moving version.
Of course they all seem to try and make one another laugh when the long poses are going on and are quite successful at doing so.
I have to say they seem to be a very good bunch of guys and girl.
Session 2 started in similar weather to session 1.
Perhaps worse as the predicted gale force winds started to hit the area but at least the wind seemed to be blowing straight down the track in the direction of travel. Makes it hard to find your braking point for turn one though as your car could be travelling up to 10 or 15kph faster, or even more, than normal with the following wind helping you along.
A slightly chaotic start to the session as the start time took some teams by surprise but very eager drivers set some very quick laps considering the conditions.
From the pits it was a case of “the red rooster tail has just overtaken the black rooster tail” as visibility was near zero.
The by now predictable red flag (no red lights as the excessive rain had shorted the circuit electrics somewhere) came out after about fifteen minutes after Lucas Auer took to the grass and parked it. He was started up again and got back to the pits under his own power.
The car of Brazilian driver Bruno Bonifacio was in the pit lane waiting to go out on track with one of his crewmen taking great lumps of wet grass out of his cockpit. Clearly another little excursion there as well.
Off they went again only to be stopped after a few more minutes with the cars of Ferrari Driver Academy pilot Marciello and Englishman Jordan King off track.
King got back to the pits eventually but the session was halted permanently before the car of Marciello returned.
Dirty, muddy and grubby but all pointing in the right direction.
No real harm done to any car this session.
Auer fastest then Cassidy, Lester, van Asseldonk, King, Hill but once again the times are relatively meaningless.
Young Lucas Auer looks pretty quick though.
Other bits of note......
The on board camera on one of the cars fell off and on to the drivers lap in the cockpit. It was not a sensible move by the driver to hurl the thing overboard somewhere on track instead of just hanging on to it and politely returning it to the pits with a cheery wave
The wrath of Race Director ‘Robbo’ and TRS headmaster Ian Snellgrove was brought to bear on the poor unfortunate chap.
This session also marked the first one of the week so far (out of eight) that the Giles Motorsport team had all five of their cars come back to the garage area without so much as a scratch..well a little scratch or two. The team has already put in some very late nights so tonight may provide some respite for them.
News of another paddock ‘celeb’ tomorrow and a report on an interesting evening for the drivers.
I am now going to empty the welly boots of water and see how that bloke Noah is getting on with his boat building.
More later......................
Bob
See also
- Bob's Blog: Second day of TRS practice
