Littlehampton is nestled in the hills west of Adelaide and has an abundance of hotels, motels with a strong emphasises of German culture, foods and drinks. The weather we were greeted with was quite hot throughout the week and never looked like raining.
The RRCSA Club produced an excellent layout for this year’s Nationals. The track looked quite impressive and we were itching to throw a car on it to see if it drives as good as it looked. Anthony & I arrived mid afternoon on Tuesday and we found a couple of locals busy practising.
The Track
The surface/layout was spread across the rise and fall of the land. From the lowest to the highest point of the track I’m guessing it would fall approximately 2 meters. The curbing and grass infield was all well manicured and the Driver’s Stand was quite large (could have supported 15 to 20 drivers at one time)

Practice – Tuesday to Friday
We got on the track Tuesday afternoon at around 3:00pm. Both Anthony’s and my car’s seem to be handling really well, quite scary really… never had that happen before. We stayed at the track till about 7:30pm with plenty of light left for practising still (one of the advantages of Daylight Saving in the southern States), but we were starting to get hungry. We nearly missed out on dinner as most to the hotels stop severing dinner around 8–8:30pm.
We got to the track around 10:00am on Wednesday and immediately started to test other combinations. The rest of our interstate competitors started to show up today and the evaluation over 5 or 6 cell started. Both Anthony & I continued to run 5 cell although I did bring a 6 cell pack just to try. Today was also when some of us in Mod started to blow tyres. The Controlled Tyre for this weekend was the Take-Off 32 Pre-Mounts.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thursday saw the arrival of the remaining Queenslander to the Track (Leonard). Practises seem to go backwards for both Anthony and myself. Our car’s started misbehaving. Today also saw more Tyre blow-outs and it started to look like a long weekend of trouble ahead. The 5 cell cars seem to be not only matching the 6 cell but on a few occasions the 5 cell seem to be the ticket for the weekend. The times that were being spread around were mid 16 sec laps, all I could manage was one or two 16 sec laps the rest were in the 17’s and 18’s. OMG, I needed extra pace in a hurry. For my last pack of the day I decided to throw in my 6 cell pack. It certainly seemed zippier in some points around the track, but I actually went about 3 tenths slower. This probably had more to do with me getting use to the extra grunt after having run 5 cell for so long now. The Fast Guys were Nicholson, Jovanovic’s, Zarb, and Maker. At the end of today I had a complete set of 4 tyres that had blown from runs today; this tyre issue looked like being the deciding factor on who was going to be on top during the finals… hmm.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Friday’s Practise had just about everyone at the track. With more and more Mod runner’s blowing tyres the Organiser’s (with the help of the local Supplier) decided to switch the tyre for “only” the Modified Competitors. The decisions to switch the tyre to “a tried and proven” tyre being the Take-Off 27 Pre-Mounts seem to be a wiser choice under the circumstances. Unfortunately for the Organiser’s later that day some of the Mod runner’s blew the 27’s as well (who would be an Event Organiser…lol). Anthony and I had a better day with our cars and although we weren’t promising anything, the cars were better to drive.
We packed up early that afternoon because we were all going out for dinner. Later that night at dinner, Anthony and I discovered all bar “Us” (the Queenslander’s) had changed over to 6 cell. The rise (hill) in the track made the 5 cell car’s a little sluggish in the back end of the 5 minute run and it looks like it will be a 6 cell track after all. It wasn’t so much that 5 cell wasn’t competitive, more so easier to be competitive. In 5 cell trim you‘d loose about 2 tenths for per after about 7 or 8 laps of the track. The uphill climbs just sucked too much out.
Funny thing is that we had to leave dinner early as Anthony, Leonard and I all had packs to re-configure… (Oh, no another late night). Things didn’t get off to a great start with the pack re-configuring. I managed to break the soldering iron in half which short circuited and blew sparks in every direction and soiled a good set of pants, lol. It tripped the power to our room and that in itself became a major problem for us. Several hours later (with the Hotel Staff) we were unable to find the tripped circuit breaker to reset it. Thankfully Anthony and Leonard had rigged up extension leads from the other rooms and were able to continue the 6 cell production line.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Qualifying
Saturday
Qualifying format was going to be round by round (4 out of 6 counting) with 3 sets of tyre to use when you felt like it. I started out with my first Qualifier a solid time of a fast 17lapper. Unfortunately, the Fast Guys were punching out mid to high 18 lappers.
Q2; I lasted 5 laps and blew a tyre on the rear…. Nice spin at the end of the back straight though…lol.
Q3; was a sloppy drive full of errors.
Q4; was a much improved drive and ended up with a slow 18 lapper, but the Fast Guys were not waiting. Nicholson punch in a 19 lapper… gezz he was quick. In that run he nearly lapped the field but blew a tyre and still managed to crawl home with a great time.
Sunday
Q5; was much better again, with the only mistakes made were not nailing every apex as close as I’d liked. I landed an 18L, 5m, 11sec; and was very pleased with that time.
Q6; I decided to try a switch of motor and go to the 4.5 and gear it to hell and see if that was any better. Unfortunately it wasn’t and I came home with a slow 18 lapper.
The Wrap-up from qualifying placed me in thirteenth spot, one behind Anthony, and Simon Feigl to lead the B Finalist charge. Anthony’s qualifying runs were plagued with runtime, mishandling car, and blown tyres. A weekend he’d probably want to forget really. The A Final list looked something like this (From memory, so don’t shoot me).

1. Ryan Maker
2. Peter Jovanovic
3. Jake Zarb
4. Simon Nicholson
5. Darrin Campbell
6. Justin Vergunst
7. Darryl Khemlani
8. Steven Jovanovic
9. David Simms
10. Andrew Abbott

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Finals
A Finals
One of the comforting things about missing the A final is that you get to see some impressive driving from Australia’s best. It was an impressive display of horsepower. All three finals just brilliant to witness and the final results were;

1. Simon Nicholson
2. Steven Jovanovic
3. Ryan Maker

Ryan was a little unlucky during the finals series, but he’s young and will learn an immense amount from these Nationals and will be stronger in future racer’s I’m sure.
B Final
My Finals went pear shaped from the get/go… My Esc switch had ripped off and during the race the car switched itself off 3 times before I called quits. Oh well, there always next year’s Nat’s eh???
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way my car & I went. I possibly could have driven a little better to capitalise on Anthony’s and Simon’s misfortune but that would have been it. The guys in the A are well deserving and I could see myself troubling them out of the A… well done to the A Finalists. As a foot note: Scott Parkinson was the only person to run 5 cell for the whole meeting, he qualified in 15th position.
I would like to thank the RRCSA Club for there efforts over the weekend and also the company of “the Flea”, “Courgar”, “the Swallow”, and Mr ScottyG.
Regards,
Peter