Sporting Directors Report

Sporting Directors Report

September 2023

I recently attended the Winton Festival of Speed at Winton Raceway in Victoria as a spectator, what a great weekend of Historic Motorsport with a 100 entries competing in 11 divisions & probably another 60 show cars on display on both days . Practice on Friday saw rain & a slippery track with plenty of competitors finishing up in the infield, Saturday & Sunday saw perfect sunny weather prevail.

The feature race for the weekend was the “Just Cars” 50 km “group N Touring Car Cup” which was great spectacle to watch with Mustang’s, Camaro’s, Falcon GT’s, Torana XU1’s, Cooper S’s, Datsun’s, Alfa’s & all the great touring cars of the sixties & seventies doing battle.

“Group S” also saw some close racing & as usual Simon Meyer driving his super quick MG midget was up the front of field worrying the hell out of the higher powered Porsche’s & Corvette’s.

“HQ Holden” racing was also great to watch with cars going through corners 4 wide at times.

“Victorian MG Racing” also had a group of 21 cars of MG & invited British Sports cars competing in their own event. Some of these cars are extensively modified machines but as I understand it engines & bits used must be of MG origin hence the cars running a V8 engine will have Rover engines in them with some of these producing over 400 hp (that’s a serious MG engine).

The group consisted of a wide range of MG models & a few Triumphs thrown in, with some close racing throughout the field.

“Team Hunter” member Bruce Melville competed in the Regularity division in his Alfa 105 & found it hard to get consistent laps in with the speed differential of the competitors.

With vehicles ranging from a T model Ford to a Boss 302 Ford Mustang Bruce’s best placing over the weekend was 4th. That was a great result considering there was a total of 37 competitors.

Bruce also recently competed in a “Combined Sports Car Association Super Sprint” run at “Sydney Motorsport Park” in his Lotus Elan S2, which had a few electrical issues & was refusing to start at times. In Bruce’s own words clearly the Alfa is more reliable than the Lotus. This year Bruce has competed in two of the biggest Historic Motorsport events in Australia at Phillip Island & Winton.

Some of the "Regularity" Line up of competitors waiting to enter the track

“GEAR” Club recently held an event at “Pheasant Wood Circuit” at Marulan with a total of 62 cars entered in the event which saw near perfect weather conditions prevail after a cold start.

With my “B” still not alive yet I made the trip down to flag & scrutineer. I believe that if your cars not running you do your turn on the other side of the fence & help those who put the time in to make these events happen. Hopefully next “GEAR” event in October I will be back on the track side of the fence again I’m really looking forward to that.

Austin Blanch has the “A” running again after an engine repair & refresh. I suspect probably a few more mods while he had it apart. It will be good to see him back on the track again.

They say there is no known cure for the dreadful disease known as Motorsport, but it gives us Old Farts something to do . As always if anyone is interested in getting into Historic Motorsport either in the drivers seat or trackside contact myself Steve Jones or Austin Blanch we’d love to have you join us I’m sure you will enjoy it as much as we do.

Coming Events

Remember drive them don’t hide them, enjoy your MG.

Gary Piper