DR. MICHAEL HENDERSON

UPDATE FROM DOWN UNDER

Last year (2006) was not the busiest for racing and in any case was interrupted by the need for prostate surgery in June. Still, managed to get in some runs and travel, with plenty of laughs and red wine.

Didn’t go down to Philip Island in February. As our esteemed Professor and leader will attest, Phillip Island is a great circuit, with sweeping curves and a lap speed in any quickish car of well over 100 miles an hour. We all love the view of the ocean as we crest the gradient midway down the main straight. Trouble is, it’s a long way from Sydney, the entry fees are expensive by Australian (not UK) standards, and the officialdom tends to be – well – officious. The weather is very dodgy, and speaking for myself, I have had an appalling reliability record there. Whenever I’ve taken two cars down, the one for my mate has run fine and mine has self-destructed. So the trip has become something of a lottery with a high ticket price, with which I declined to engage in 2006.

But Eastern Creek, where we ran the 1982 Ralt RT4 Formula Atlantic in March, is in western Sydney and reachable from our house in the northern outskirts within the hour via motorway for most of the distance. Eastern Creek was built by the New South Wales Government about 15 years ago in a bid to secure the Australian Grand Prix, which was then in Adelaide. A combination of official cold feet and a track that turned out to be too twisty for F1 put paid to that, but it’s turned into a pretty good facility. The land is still owned by the government but the operation is run by the Australian Racing Drivers Club.

Personally, I like the circuit. There is a challenging turn 1 after a longish straight that allows an Atlantic to wind out to about 150 mph. The Ralt is OK flat, a non-ground-effects Atlantic is scary flat. Then there’s a second or third gear turn 2, a good overtaking opportunity if you’ve got turn 1 right. Then there’s a series of sweeping, constant-radius turns, over a hill and down to a hairpin, and back through another sweeper to the straight. Lap speed 95-100 mph for the faster Atlantics, 80-85 mph for the Elva-BMW. Ran third over the weekend, with some good scraps along the way but not much depth of competition though the field (made up for 1970-1986 wings and slicks).

At Easter, our particular group of mates usually takes the two-day slog across western NSW to South Australia and the Mallala circuit north of Adelaide. Mallala was a WW2 airfield and is reminiscent for that reason of places like Snetterton. It’s not a technical track, straights followed by slow corners, very hard on brakes – and therefore hard on the Elva- BMW, the brakes on which are not among its most commendable virtues. The grouping for our races, up to 1985 sports and racing cars, was a gift for the Elva, and we cleaned up without too much trouble or boiling the brakes. (Did I mention it was very hot there?) Going out for the last race of the weekend I got clobbered by an idiot’s trailer in the paddock, but the insurance company paid up without demur and the car is now smarter than ever.

The circuit is a bit bleak, but the locals are very friendly and helpful. The social life is a highlight. Our Sydney group normally shares a rental house or two near the circuit and on the Monday we then set off on a tour of the several vineyards in one of the nearby Barossa or Clare Valley regions.

One of our group, against whom I first raced in 1969 and now runs a ferociously fast Chevron B8 BMW, has among his business interests a couple of bottle shops in Sydney, and can be relied on for advice on wine price and quality when we are on away matches. On the few occasions he has not come with us our custom is to ring him for advice on the wine list before ordering.

Then came the medically-induced layoff, during which time we missed three meetings we’d done in 2005, including a trip up to Queensland. During a race business trip to Melbourne in November I called in at Sandown Park, where the feature races were for Formula 5000s. The circuit suits them; I don’t like it much, it’s another point and shoot track, but a full grid of 5000s does shake the place up a bit. Most of these cars are in New Zealand these days, because of track licence restrictions on them at most circuits in Australia and a general lack of competitor interest. As a related matter, they were trying very hard to get a run as a support race at the Australian Grand Prix this year, but were finally turned down. The official reasons were related to scheduling and safety concerns. They were replaced – and I am ashamed to admit this – by a category known as “Aussie Racing Cars”, midgets with motorcycle engines.

We were back in action with the Elva in early December for the 1960s “Tasman Revival” meeting at Eastern Creek. This was an attempt to recreate some of the atmosphere of the Tasman races which attracted most of the F1 and other hotshots to Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and early 1970s. In period the Sydney circuit in the series was at Warwick Farm, a horse race track that hasn’t been used for motor racing for decades. I raced the Elva at Warwick Farm many times in period, including one of the Tasman support races.

The Tasman Revival attracted a good field from the UK and USA, but several of the British cars – including some from Classic Team Lotus – were in two containers in a ship that had to return after leaving the UK, then was re-routed, then got delayed by bad weather, then . . . Anyway, they didn’t arrive until Sunday afternoon, very disappointing. But most people never noticed, as there was a massive turnout of 1960s racing and sports cars anyway. There are several pix on the web (see for example the AtlasF1 Nostalgia Forum, Tasman Revival Meeting) and some in the latest Motor Sport, although most of the latter are wrongly captioned (except for that of my good friend and RT4 rival Chris Farrell in his Brabham FVA).

The Elva went pretty well over the weekend, running mostly third or fourth (in the dry) behind a Matich SR3 Can-Am car and a very quick Mallock U2, and having trouble with a local Lotus 23 copy and another local, a Holden-engined Bolwell. It did get wet for a while, and I am getting pretty cautious these days, so results in the damp were inauspicious and best not mentioned.

Then in came 2007, and in early February one of the support races for the Australian race in the A1GP series was for historic Formula Atlantic, as it was last year. The organisers of the round, at Eastern Creek again, reckon we put on a good show and are “no trouble”. The public perception of historics tends to be of spindly-wheelers, so we get a chance to show that our later (but still 20-year-old) cars can still lap at speeds that would not disgrace us in the other supports, which were GT cars and Formula 3. Most of us were running RT4s, and the field was a full grid of just over 30, which made for excellent racing. During the weekend we scratched up from 10th to 5th, which we were pretty pleased about, given the driver’s age and decrepitude and the substantial move into our group of younger men who realise that it’s about the best and most cost-effective quick single-seat racing in Australia these days.

Next outing is at the March Australian GP at Albert Park in Melbourne, where the Elva has been invited to the historic “demonstration” event. Haven’t done this before, so we’re looking forward to it. After that, we’re not sure about racing, because I’m formally retiring this year and to put the issue beyond question we are spending four months in the UK and France, May to September (taking in the Goodwood Revival).

A related enterprise is that we are following the FIA model and CAMS has founded an Australian Institute for Motor Sport Safety. I have been elected/appointed Chairman, and in that capacity flew to France in mid-January to the FIA Institute’s first “Summit” at Paul Ricard, in southern Provence. If you’re passing by there any time, call in and have a look. It’s a test circuit now, but runs a few club meetings. It’s got to be comfortably the safest and most boring circuit in the world, with massive abrasive run-off areas striped blue and red. I had a run around in an Audi, and the perception is surreal. It would be fun to test there, because it’s essentially impossible to damage the car or yourself. Alex Wurz showed a movie of him flying off the end of the long main straight at 320 km/h, spinning wildly several times, and then only lightly touching the high-tech barrier. We’re aiming to launch the Australian Institute at the Australian GP, hopefully with the aid of Sid Watkins or other luminaries.

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