[NZ} Lepperton Rallysprint

[kiwicanfly]

On Sunday 23rd April our club held a rallysprint at Lepperton in Taranaki.

This was the first such event I had competed in and differed from the usual hill climbs and sprints in that you had to carry a passenger and the total of three runs counted rather than your best single run.

I decided that rather than simply roping in a mate or a lightweight passenger I would take advantage of a bloke called Steve who is an experienced rally driver but is currently without his car due to gearbox troubles.

This worked well as he was able to give me meaningful advice, mainly via hand signals.

As the final times were made up from three runs (from six) I made this video in which I split the video from all the runs into twenty sections and selected the best run for each section.



Whilst my total time saw me finish well down the running order it was a very fast course suited to much more powerful vehicles. For example the top speed I hit was around 150kph whereas I have watched videos from previous years where speeds approaching 240kph were achieved and cars were leaving the ground at 200kph in places. A bit scary considering there was absolutely no place to go if things had gone wrong at this speed.

The day saw a few casualties, mainly vehicle, with broken gearboxes and clutches and one car embedded in a bank (this can be seen at the 2:32 mark).

At the end is an extra snippet of what happened at a corner on run one.

I have moved my camera position due to acquiring a new mounting clamp, it shows the front suspension movement quite nicely, the audio also shows(?) the car grounding a number of time so a few turns on the rear springs are required.

[jake]

That looks good fun. Like you said not very forgiving roads if you get it wrong. Would take some big ones to push hard. Good on you for having a go. Beautiful scenery similar to the British country side only a lot warmer 😂

[R2S]

Great vid not sure about the hand signal at 2:05 is it I want to get out?

Roads look just like round here, Peak Forest - Dovedale - Wormhill - Millers Dale - Bakewell I really must get my Replicar finished

[kiwicanfly]

Ah those Derbyshire roads, I remember them well. Running into the dry stone walls on my pushbike was my worry though, not hitting them in a car.

The big danger, in a Rocket, on the roads in the video is the wire fences. When I first looked into making the car comply with motorsport requirements our club scrutineer told me to go for a full cage rather than just a roll bar as he "would not be picking up my head if I went through a wire fence"! Made me think.

Without a cage I could not have run this event as I had to carry a passenger and in order to do so you have to have a cage, in both open and closed cars. But the same sort of roads are used for sprint events and hill climbs though which I could run roll bar only.

Was chatting with the event motorsport rep today, he used to work for us, I commented that I did not even see the crashed car on the final corner, his comment was "that's what your navigator is for, the drivers job is to keep his eye on the road".