A Flag Marshal's Journey: April 2014

Monday, 21 April 2014

Bathurst Easter Motor Festival 2014

Well who could of asked for a more wonderful w/end the weather was fantastic with cool mornings and beautiful sunny days. This was a three day event with Regularity, Sports Cars, N class classics, Touring cars and F3. The F3 class Set a new Track Record of 2m02.6701s. I was working at 10.5 at top of Mountain Friday we had Practice and Qualifying with a good day and not to much happening, Saturday saw a big pile up on the first lap of a 10 lap race of the sport cars right in front of our point a car spun coming out of 10.0 with most of the field behind him we ended up we multiple contacts bringing out the Safety Car but in the end the first car was the worst being towed away with the rest able to drive off on their own. On the restart we had A Porsche end up in the sand trap bring out the Safety Car again I think in the end they only made one lap out of ten without Safety Car. Sunday morning fairly quiet but the afternoon saw a Subaru WRX dumping oil from 9.8 all across top of mountain down to the bottom where he stopped but before we could bring race under control another car spun on the oil at 10.0 hitting the wall and causing substantial damage and this was in the Regularity so after a big clean up which took over 1/2 hour we were back on track. Sports Cars had a 1 hour race to Finish the day with a good first 1/2 hour things started to go wrong after driver change and Safety Car again took up most of second part of race, with a one lap sprint for the finish we ended up with a two car roll over at the end of the chase 22.0. Top w/end with great friends and most of all the drivers of all incidents came out OK.

Flag 10.5

Looking down to 11.0

Looking back to 10.0

View down to Race control and paddock

Speaks for itself

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Winton 400 April 2014

Another w/end done and dusted this time V8 Supercars at Winton and what a w/end to be track-side with some of the best racing I have seen for a while and to see the team I follow FPR get 2nd in race 8 and 1st in race 9. And to see History in the making with Erebus getting their first win in race 8 good on ya Betty.
Friday I was on flag point 1.0 pit exit with two others looking after flags,blend line and stationary blue for cars exiting pit lane so even though not much happened at our point we were still were kept busy with Practice for all categories today. We had showers for about an hour in the afternoon but day was mostly fine.
W/end I was assigned to flag point 5.0 with Steve Becker this is on a small straight before a sweeping left turn also a good spot to see it all going bad from Start round to turn 4.0 you can see almost 100% of the track from this point. Again nothing big happened at our point a few cars going wide and a sport sedan pulling up next to us for a visit but a great w/end heaps of fun.
Next event Bathurst Easter Motor Festival.