'Is this the coldest place on Earth or what?' I ask CT as his pulls his beautiful Oval into the pits at Wakefield Park. He smiles but can't reply as his teeth are frozen together. This nut has no carpet, no headliner, no soundproofing & to put u over the edge, no stereo. Its 7:30 am on Sunday morning & there is frost everywhere. CT spent the night in Goulburn but I drove down on the morning. I left the Central Coast at 4:20am & got there at about 7:00am. Not bad going. It was freezing! The closer that I got to Goulburn the more frost bite that I got on my toes. Even with 4 layers of clothing up top, with gloves & a beanie it wasn't as cozy as I had hoped it to be in my Superbug. Note to self, get heater. Even singing to myself with the Stereo blasting The Beastie Boys caused fogged up windows. Insert the crazy taxi driver from the Chili Peppers new film clip, but without the mullet. U get the idea.
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CT & I unload our cars & already there is some very exotic machinery being unloaded from trailers. There were no less than 5 GT3's, & modified ones at that, a string of GT2's & 911s & Boxters as far as the eye could see. Our favourite was the 914-6 with the 3.2 Carrera motor behind the front seats, enough said really. Also there were 2 absolutely immaculate 356's. Not racing, just posing, buts that's alright.
I help CT put his race rubber on & we are ready for scrutineering, which as usual we fly through. We also now have to take breath tests at scrutineering.......or maybe they thought we must have been under the influence bringing lawn mowers to a Porsche event. Either way we pass & stumble back to our pit bay.
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CT unfortunately missed out on the first run due to having to get petrol, whereas I had filled up just before arriving. This gave me chance to have a run with an instructor in the car as I thought that it would be wise as I had never run at Wakefield before, never run a track clockwise before & had never had to use anything but 3rd & 4th gear on the track. Really starting to sound like an amateur huh? The instructor jumps in & says, 'How fast does this little thing go?' 'Not that fast' I reply. We head out immediately get into it. After 2 laps with his instructions he lets me drive without saying anything. After 2 more laps I ask him if he wants me to let him out, He says 'nah this is great, keep going!' As u wish. My new tyres , Falken Azinez are just amazing & I really start to throw the car around. I can't believe the transformation that they have made to the handling of the car. There is no understeer, no oversteer, totally neutral. Even when I tried to get it out of shape to see the limits they wouldn't let me. Fantastic. 2nd gear, 7000rpm, on a bend, left hand wheels on the ripple strip, slam it into third & there is no movement from the rear end, it just bites & takes off. Can't complain.
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I let the instructor out in the line up grid, he says that I've done better than he expected not having been there before & says that he will now have everyone here asking him what it was like in the little VW. He smiles & says 'Have fun'
CT is now back from getting petrol & ready for action. We line up for our first timed session with myself leading our group out with CT behind me. Behind us are a string of older 911s & a couple of Boxters. After a few warm up laps CT catches up to me & now the fun begins. We jostle each other for position & I actually find that I drive better following him as I'm not spending all my time looking in the revision mirror waving to him. We pull onto the straight & CT is literally metres away from my bumper, I only pull 5500rpm in 3rd, CT pulls out of my draft, pulls 6500rpm in 3rd & slowly pulls past me ( we really have to get this shit on video ) we are side by side into the first kink at the end of the straight & I know that if I look to my left that I will see CT with a big smile on his face just like me but better judgment tells me not to take my eyes off the road. I brake very early so as to let him through, if we had paddock bashers I would have taken him on & tried to out brake him but I like our paint jobs just the way they are. I tuck in behind him & he is a little off line & have the better line so I thought that I take him back on the inside turning onto a late apex. CT just touches the ripple strip & starts to lose the back of it but the A008R's bite in & the inside front wheel lifts into the air by at last half a foot, I thought that he was gone & I would end up reshaping his drivers door with my front bumper. He somehow catches it & brings it back to earth, meanwhile I have backed off & lost all hope of taking him on the inside. I chase him up the hill & pull him back in the first couple of kinks. We stay like this for the rest of the lap & CT pulls in as his oil is up to 120d already & I stay out for 2 more laps.
After 2 more timed sessions I have a best of 1.20 & CT has a best of 1.18. We're not quite sure where the difference in time is coming from as we seem so evenly pegged when we drive together, so we put it down to the weight of the cars, 890kg to 760kg & maybe we have different diffs, 3.88 to 4.12, it may be hindering me from pulling out of the corners as well, but the smile on our faces makes up for any loss of time. Its a blast & the cars are still perfect.
CT still has the re-occurring problem of valve float with his huge 44 x 37 valves, but besides that we have no complaints.
We don't leave until 3:30pm & I lead a group of Porsches all the way home on the M5. Picture a Superbug, Boxster, 968 Turbo & a 911 Carrera doing 130kph inline with race numbers on the doors. Put a smile on your dial?
Till next time, Jak