Did you enjoy Oran Park?

[biante2959]

What a day for us Holden fans.
Its about time Mark Skaife returned to the Podium.
Got heaps of COA's signed.
Flew in and out by chopper was excellent but a bit hairy with all the wind gusts happening. ( I waived to you all but nobody waived back.)
Weather left a lot to be desired, nowhere to hide from the freezing wind.
Not much in the way of bargains.


Excellent Day for us Holden fans.

[xa351gt]

Pardon my ignorance ,but I don't quite understand this system of determining race/round winners. I guess I'm to used to a one race per weekend system that is applied here in the US. Who won this weekend ? Skaife wins race one with Marcos 2nd and Marcos takes 1st in race two and Skaife finishes 2nd. Leaving both with the same amount of points for the weekend. So who won the round ? Is this considered a tie ? I'm used to a clear cut winner. This points sytem seems confusing to me .

[lukey73]

xa they deem the winner of the second race the winner if equal on points for the day, stupid thing but that how its done.

Luke

[the_goldie]

Went out Sat and Sunday (thanks for the free ticket stevelb1) My mates were trying to get it off me...

I took heaps of photos and a few short videos with my Canon A80. Oh where is the extra optical zoom!!! 3x optical is just not enough for the V8s. Might have to look at getting the extra lens for it.

Also took about 2 1/2 rolls of film with the old trusty Pentax ME Super. Hopefully my camera skills have improved since the Procar event at Oran Park.

I will add a few photos to webshots sometime this week - maybe even at lunch time today.

Had a great day on Sat, got Skaife to sign about 4 of my COAs he was signing stuff for about 40mins. Also got Murphy to sign a few, Lowndes and Rick Kelly. Brighty to sign one of my photos from Eastern Creek last year and also Simon Wills who commented on my photo ;) which was nice. Didn't see Ambrose, Ingall, TKelly, BJones, any of the Perkins guys, Morris, JRichards, or any of the 888 guys. But most of the others were wandering in and out of their pits or around their trailers.

Had a good day on Sunday, the wind certainly made it cold. Thought the racing was a little bit boring... Didn't see too many moves happening. Good to see some big screens as well which often helped if you missed something. As always I never seem to know who is where when at the track, probably too busy taking photos and drinking beer. Historics were good value as always.

Next round for me will be Bathurst :D

Those who stayed home because of traffic, I left after the Historics finished and the traffic was fine. It was a bit heavy along Northern Road but nothing like it has been. Not sure what it would have been like after the V8s finished as 75% of the crowd left then.

[Barra]

Thumbs up for the new traffic management. A vast improvement in getting out of the place.

[SWRT]

I got all my autographs on Friday,came Saturday for the shoot out, and enjoyed watching the race on the couch on Sunday.Last time I went on race day (2002),traffic was murder getting out, so I got bad memories of V8 races on Sunday at OP (eastern creek is really quick to get out of).
Last time an equal points equation happened was Indy 02, when Bargwanna won on Sunday and took the round,disallowing a Lowndes/00 motorsport round win.

[Damian]

Did some Autograph hunting on Friday for a Bathurst poster and some photo's.
Saturday took the camera for a workout around the pit area and met up with Darin (kiwiracing).
Sunday went with some mates and watched the race fom the go-kart control tower on the northern end of the track as we managed to talk our way in. Left after the historic's final race and it only took ten minutes for us to leave the track via the Northern Road. A great improvement on last year :D

Regards
Damian

[toad]

Did anybody see this.....

Jason Bright held onto his championship lead in the V8 supercar series at Sydney's Oran Park yesterday amid allegations that his car had been sabotaged and his life put in danger.

Bright's Holden Commodore stopped with a jammed open throttle and locked engine during Friday's opening practice session, and subsequent investigations by the team unearthed "six to 10 small, brand new bolts and a couple of washers" in a cylinder and a plastic bag jammed around the fuel injection intake butterfly valve.

Details of the incident were revealed only yesterday by Bright's PWR team principal, Kees Weel, who said he was going public to warn other teams.

He admitted the team's two cars were not locked in the transporter overnight on Thursday, as some other teams had done, and that, unusually, the racing cars' bonnets were not locked before the team left for the night.

He said someone who knew what they were doing must have opened the race car's bonnet, removed the air intake box (which was not easy) and put the plastic bag of bolts into an engine air intake trumpet. It would have occurred some time between 8pm on Thursday and 7.30am on Friday

[toad]

and.....

Weel said the team also had suspicions that someone had interfered with the steering of the team's second car, driven by his son, Paul. "I have never had anything like this happen before; it makes me feel sick," he said.

Weel added that the team considered notifying police but decided against it -- despite admitting the lives of his drivers might have been endangered -- because of the disruption it would cause in a vital championship round.

The Queensland-based team uses engines built and supplied by Holden Motor Sport, whose director, Ray Borrett, said he had not been aware of any similar sabotage in racing teams in recent years.

"It was done by someone who definitely knew what they were doing," he said.

Because of the destruction of his engine on Friday, Bright missed a large amount of practice time and managed to finish yesterday's two 54-lap races with fourth and third placings.

[stonebrosfan]

i had a great time for the following reasons:

1. I WON AN XBOX (including Xbox live and V8SC 2)
2. I got pitlane access from about lunchtime on the sunday!
3. I got to drive around the track after the other categories had finished (to put out the fires that all the drunk guys were starting)

[clubbie]

I saw the future on Saturday and Sunday. He' s called James Moffat and boy can he drive.

Yep - It was cold and windy.

Yep - the new Oran Park traffic management worked a treat.

Yep - there were plnty of Yobbos pissed by lunchtime and thinking eveything they did or said was funny. A call them attention Whores. Can someone tell me why these fools are always wearing red??.

Thanks to StoneBROSfan for putting out the fires.

[dwarfs]

usually the FPR cat falcon of craig lowndes spends most of the time in the pits but at round 8 it was all different Glenn seton going off at turn 2 or 3 damaged his car enough to put him out of race 1 but was ready to fo for race 2.

there has been alot of random things that happened at round 8 first of all how the hell did the nuts washers etc get in Brights car.
the only reason i can think of was that ford was not leading the championship and bright was so they stuffed around with his and paul weels car.
it didnt work because the team is to BRIGHT not to notice something wrong with the car.

second of all the fire extinguisher out of car 10 (jason bargwanna)
fall out on to the race track(race 2) causing jason richards to run widebut not losing any posistions.
race marshalls are deciding what should happen about this.

its great to see skaife up and running again after a sh@# start to this season.
skaife should of had the round win but the rule stays.
if 2 drivers have the same amount of points at the end of race day
the driver which won or had the best posistion on the last race wins the round in that case it was ambrose so ambrose took the round win.



cheers:)

[Esses]

Did I enjoy Oran Park? Sort of. I enjoyed Ambrose winning, I even enjoyed Skaife doing well ('cause Brock's going to be driving one of HRT's at Bathurst) but I didn't enjoy not seeing any of it. Took the kids & their Grands up the snow instead & didn't set the video. Cest la Vie. Had a ball watching the Grands & my Boys having snowball fights & my 21 month-old Daughter's reactions to her first snow. Oh well, Bathurst weekend is RESERVED, MINE, INVIOLATE etc etc.

Biante2959, nobody waved at you because you "waived" at them. Had you waved at them I'm sure they'd've waved back. Instead they waived the opportunity.:D

[singer]

I enjoyed the Oran Park telecast however, I had to referee my son & his friends squabbles. That put a bit of a dampener on things, especially when the kids got rowdy.:)

[badboyau69]

I found the oran park round a bit boring this year but it was good to see skaife back up the front again and bright still leading the championship. I hope Bright can take out the championship this year and give holden back the championship. I also hope Murphs can have a bit more luck for the rest of the rounds.

[Glen Alexander]

I am really annoyed at the rules regarding the equal points decision. It should go to whoever qualified higher on the weekend. Skaife won more than Ambrose over the weekend, so he should be rewarded for his efforts. Maybe the Top 10/15 shootout should be worth a few points, say 1st gets 10/15 points down to 10th/15th who get 1 point. It would give drivers just that tiny bit more encouragement to go hard 110% of the time.

But all in all I had a good day out on the Sunday. Even though I worked a 10 hour shift, finished at 6am and went straight to the track, then straight back to work after that and did another 10 hour shift till 4am!! I was awake for 41 hours!! Let's just say I had a great sleep last night!!

[tonynz]

Just got back to the snow in NZ,
We had a great time got Murph's book signed and a few diecasts.
Met Kiwiracing by luck I had never met him, he figured out it was me when I was getting the books signed by Murph.
Traffic was no problems we left after the 2nd Super Car race, we were parked in the parking area behid the pits by the fence, took us 5 mins to get out on to Cobbitty Road then traffic was good, took about 5mins longer going back to my brothers house than it did getting there each day.

[b sharp]

Good on BIANTE for sponsering the historic cars, awsome raceing,
could have watched them all day.
How good would it be to see old group c cars like XC / XD / XE's
and LH / VK / A9X's etc. out there aswell, a real step back in time. :D

[toad]

Originally posted by b sharp
Good on BIANTE for sponsering the historic cars, awsome raceing,
could have watched them all day.
How good would it be to see old group c cars like XC / XD / XE's
and LH / VK / A9X's etc. out there aswell, a real step back in time. :D

The Historic formula for these cars only allows the actual cars that raced or were log booked to race to compete now. Unlike Group N (a, b, c) that allow replica's.

I agree it would be awsome although I question how many people would be happy bring their original Group C racecars out of storage/museums etc and expose them to the extreme doorhandle to doorhandle racing that GroupN replica's do. Many are very valuable now and only used for parade laps.

[V8 fan]

i thought it was GREAT... and cold. Very Cold. Ozi cars were exelent, with a great last 2 laps of the first race. More action than a series of V8's. V8 20 min warm up session was packed with action - race tame in comparison. The Historics were great. That cammaro was Awsome (dam quick as well), and the Phase 3 Driver couldn't drive straight. V8s were average, and i was glad Skaife did well - he deserved to win. (i thought pole gave you points?). Donut King utes were exelent.
The fire was pretty bad, as i was about 15 metres away from it. (i nearly got into trouble for fires b4 in a stupid incident) so i am very against fires atm.
Best part was the bit where wegot out of the place in 7 and a half minutes. We traveled almost 10km/h constantly! don't no about over at the grandstands but.
Does anyone have Photos on Digi cam. Totaly 4got film this year. POST THEM PLEASE. (especailly Hist. cars)

[clubbie]

A few of us have posted galleries. Just look back through the threads over the past few days.

[Esses]

Back to Bright's "Bag of Bolts" - no, I don't mean the Commodore.:) We were talking at work about the "sabotage" & 1 of the guys (he builds V8's for fun) suggested "why couldn't it have just been a clumsy mechanic working on the manifold or throttle-bodies?" When you think about it, it makes a bit more sense than a Phantom Saboteur sneaking around the Transporters. After all, it was supposed to be a bag of "brand-new" bolts, something that a leading V8SC Team would use, perhaps?

[stonebrosfan]

firstly, im not saying that PWR is lying, but i do find it a bit hard to believe:

i was present in pit lane for the start of the practice session on the friday and the cars (PWR as well) sat in pit lane waiting for about 5 mins before they were allowed onto the track (and god knows for how much longer beforehand in the garage) and dont you think they would have noticed then? they are the best holden team and yet they dont even notice when foreign objects are in their engines.

[Kenseth17]

Originally posted by lukey73
xa they deem the winner of the second race the winner if equal on points for the day, stupid thing but that how its done.

Luke

I understood the way they work out a winner in this situation is because Ambrose was the last to win a race of the two and he already had two wins this year, they award the win to him.Like a countback system.

[the_goldie]

Bright and Ingall tied for points at Oran Park also, therefore Bright got on the podium as he finished higher in Race 2. So it could have been Skaife/Ambrose/Ingall, but it was Ambrose/Skaife/Bright on the podium :)

I think they should hand out points for the Top 10 shootout also like others have mentioned.
1st =10, 2nd=9, 3rd=8 etc... down to 10th=1

[Barra]

No, Luke is right. It is based on the positions of the final race of the meeting.

I actually agree with this method as I am not an advocate of awarding points for qualifying.

[tonynz]

The winner of the second race as the over all winner is used quite often.
In Moto-X it is like that no one ever questions int.

[Barra]

Originally posted by the_goldie
...
I think they should hand out points for the Top 10 shootout also like others have mentioned.
1st =10, 2nd=9, 3rd=8 etc... down to 10th=1

Why not have a Peter Jackson Dash as well? (Hardly)

Qualifying should be just that........"Qualifying".

[Riddler]

Originally posted by the_goldie

I think they should hand out points for the Top 10 shootout also like others have mentioned.
1st =10, 2nd=9, 3rd=8 etc... down to 10th=1
Axe the $5000 pole cheque and give the top ten shoot out grid points...

[Kenseth17]

Originally posted by Barra
No, Luke is right. It is based on the positions of the final race of the meeting.

I actually agree with this method as I am not an advocate of awarding points for qualifying.

Oh Ok.If that's a set rule then I guess nobody can feel aggrieved with it I guess.It does make some sense.It must be one of the few black and white rules that AVESCO have. :D
I certainly didn't mind the result.
:)

[the_goldie]

Originally posted by Barra
Why not have a Peter Jackson Dash as well? (Hardly)

Qualifying should be just that........"Qualifying".

Why even bother with the top 10 shootout then... just leave the results at what they did in "qualifying"?!

[Barra]

Originally posted by the_goldie
Why even bother with the top 10 shootout then... just leave the results at what they did in "qualifying"?!

Exactly. I believe the that shootout was introduced at Bathurst just for TV reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I done mind the session (although it could be a bit overdone at every round), I just don't think that it should not count for points.

Again, just my opinion.

[Damian]

Just uploaded some photo's from the Oran Park round. Please click here (http://community.webshots.com/user/dc1971)
to view. :D

Regards
Damian

[the_goldie]

Originally posted by Damian
Just uploaded some photo's from the Oran Park round. Please click here (http://community.webshots.com/user/dc1971)
to view. :D

Regards
Damian

Damian - great photos!!! I am not sure if you have mentioned it before, but what sort of camera did you use? IT certainly has a nice zoom on it.

Are you going to Bathurst?

[Damian]

Thank's Cameron for the comments you've got some good shot's yourself.
The camera I use is a Nikon F60 SLR (film camera) which is about 6 years old now. I have 2 zoom lense's which are a 38-200 and a 200-400. I am hoping on going to Bathurst with a couple of mates.
We went last year for a day trip but it was very, very long day. We're hoping to go up on Saturday afternoon this time round so we don't have to leave so early from Sydney on Sunday. What are your plans for Bathurst?

Regards
Damian

[the_goldie]

Originally posted by Damian
Thank's Cameron for the comments you've got some good shot's yourself.
The camera I use is a Nikon F60 SLR (film camera) which is about 6 years old now. I have 2 zoom lense's which are a 38-200 and a 200-400. I am hoping on going to Bathurst with a couple of mates.
We went last year for a day trip but it was very, very long day. We're hoping to go up on Saturday afternoon this time round so we don't have to leave so early from Sydney on Sunday. What are your plans for Bathurst?

Regards
Damian

Thanks Damian - first time I had used my new digital cam (Canon A80) at the track, other than that I have not used it that much - starting to now though. I am going to scan in some of my photos on the weekend that I took with the SLR.

Wow the 400mm must get you nice and close. I am going to take my Pentax ME Super to check out a 2x teleconverter for my 100-300mm lens tomorrow. Can pick it up for about $40.

Bathurst - be up there Friday morning around 7a, set up camp and then the weekend begins. Can't wait!!! Will load up with some rechargeable batteries for the digi and lots of film for the SLR. Hopefully with what I have learnt over the past year I can get some better shots on the SLR.

Also looking at getting a 2x teleconverter for the digi, digital zoom is a WASTE of time! It is just a selling ploy I think.

Has anybody used 800 film? I saw an advertisment from Konica when I got my photos developed. I normally use 400.

Cheers.

[Damian]

Originally posted by the_goldie
Has anybody used 800 film? I saw an advertisment from Konica when I got my photos developed. I normally use 400.
Cheers.

I have only used 800 speed film once as it is really hard to buy anywhere or maybe I have'nt looked hard enough. I have recently used the Kodak HD (high defenition) and it wins hands down in my opinion. I think it has replaced their 800 speed film , but I can't be too sure.
I'm also looking at buying a Nikon D70 digital at the end of the year. I use the Tamron lenses and I've been told that you can interchange them between the film & digital camera's with no problem's. The digital has a convert factor of 1.5 which wil make the 200-400 for my film camera a 300-600. you'll be able to see the blood vessel's in thier eyeball's.Can't wait for that.

Regards
Damian

[brchi17]

Originally posted by the_goldie
......Has anybody used 800 film? I saw an advertisment from Konica when I got my photos developed. I normally use 400....

Cam, I’ve run a couple of rolls of 800asa at PI a few times & have found it to be of no advantage over 400asa.

Perhaps it was my camera that was not up to the task, but I found I could get better f-settings on cloudy days, but when processed there were dam average & terribly expensive to have done.

Stick with the 400asa & save the cash to put towards a descent printer for your digi prints.

cheers. :)

ps, I've used Kodak & Fuji 800asa film - no diference for me.