Wet and miserably cold was the tone for our weekend in Goulburn for the HSRCA Autumn Festival, but that did little to dissuade competitors from enjoying a great meeting in the countryside.

An extra session of practice early on Saturday in heavy rain saw only 16 of the 26 competitors venture tentatively on track. Chris Thomas managed a 1.23 followed by Adrian the Younger with a 1.25.

Qually [26 cars], held in the rain, saw Chris Thomas in the Torana streak away from the big cars with a 1.20. I was disqualified for failing to see black flags due to wiper and driver fail!

Race 1 with the track still drying featured a few rivers in sections. Chris wrung a 1.09 out of the Torana for a win over Chris O’Brien and Macri.

Race 2 went to Obrien, Thomas and Tilley.

Race 3 Obrien, Tilley, Thomas, with an exciting time in the fishhook where an overly ambitious move to out brake both myself and Bob Munday led to unnecessary panel damage and retirement by another Mini.

Race 4 with a grid of 18 cars saw Tilley triumph with Obrien in second and Thomas third. It also provided us with the fastest lap of the weekend from Group N at 1.07.5 by Brad!

An exciting start for the back of the field with a stalled car on row 6 well flagged by the grid marshalls.

Sunday morning after a bitterly cold night left us shivering at the track in 4 degree weather at 8AM.

I must complement HSRCA’s Clerk of Course Ian Mayberry and his team for their work over the weekend, Sunday morning it was good to see a few drivers being spoken to about “racing incidents”.

Fantastic to see Vince Harmer out playing again in his beautifully presented Volvo.

Also David Stone reappearing in a new and very tidy Mustang!

All of the Minis present were running old stock worn Hoosiers in the dry due to supply issues, yet Alex the Magnificent still managed a cracking 1.11 in race 2 as the track began to dry out.

An uncharacteristic high speed display of backwards motoring early in the weekend by Uncle Graham at T3 was paled into insignificance by Macri the Younger later in the day with a magnificent slither all the way up to the T4 Marshalls post. Pleased to report only damage may have been to egos.

Good to see Andrew Glidden come all the way from Tasmania with his Mini. A novel way to beat costs on the car ferry – he put the race car on the back of a trayback ute!

Perhaps BAC could spend a little money on some roadbase and a grader on the “road to ruin” down behind the canteen where a majority of us “cheap seats” set up camp in the traditional area near our old shed.

HSRCA ran a great meeting and I expect a huge group N field at their next meeting at SMSP on June 8 & 9! Thanks to Rod Wallace, Richard Cardew and the committee.

Cheers,

D.R.

Photos thanks to Seth Reinhardt. see the HSRCA’s wrap-up for many more.