After weathering the winter months we were back at Wakefield Park this weekend, the 22nd & 23rd of September, reliving the glory days of motorsport with the 2018 Spring Festival. Now that we’ve had a few days to re-align ourselves with the routine of the working week, it’s time to look back on the event with a set of photo galleries and a wrap-up. Onwards!
The HSRCA’s second historic race meeting of 2018 saw us return to Goulburn for a relaxed weekend’s motorsport. While the weather couldn’t quite match the perfect conditions of April’s Autumn Festival, it came very close with two cool and dry days that were good for motorsport, if not spectacular for photographs.
Healthy entries, plenty of action in the pits and paddock and quality camaraderie between entrants, officials, friends, families and spectators contributed to a relaxed and happy atmosphere and a fun social weekend. We work hard to provide quality track time at HSRCA meetings, but it’s everything going on around the racing itself that makes for a truly great weekend. Thanks to all involved for your good-natured and welcoming attitudes.
On the topic of maximising track time, we tried a few different things with the schedule of the Spring Festival, to greater and lesser degrees of success. We welcome your feedback on the format of the meeting and its execution, and will continue to develop our approach to running these meetings to provide the best experiences possible for everyone involved.
Earlier I declared that the Spring Festival was held over the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd, but truly, we kicked off on Friday with private practice kindly hosted by Wakefield Park. Friday was an absolute stunner of a day, and a very relaxed and enjoyable way to start the weekend.
We were in top gear by Saturday, which opened with qualifying before we got into the swing of race, regularity and super sprint events that continued through to Sunday afternoon.
Amongst our feature events of the Spring Festival were the awesome Sports Sedans, which ran a super sprint format with a rolling start and included a field of both period and tribute cars. These fit perfectly into the meeting and were very well received by all involved. Thanks to the team for being involved, and to Mark Stockwell and many others working hard behind the scenes to get the category off the ground. We look forward to seeing more of you at future events.
Our other feature grid, Sports Racing, was also well-represented, and we continue to enjoy the progression of Daniel Nolan in the Nola Chev and Tom Tweedie in the Elfin MS7. These two continue to bring down lap records and are bringing the sport of historic racing to a younger generation – it’s magic to see.
Group S was well on its way to track capacity this weekend and put on some of the most exciting racing of the festival. This included a particularly close and very respectful dice between Doug Barber and Wayne Seabrook, who spent the entirety of their Saturday afternoon race separated by a length or two. We were also happy to see a good Group N field for the final meeting of the Historic Touring Car Association of NSW’s 2018 season. In the open-wheelers, Formula Ford and Formula Vee were also well-subscribed and put on another weekend of their traditionally closely-fought motorsport.
We saw some inspiring entry numbers in the lead-up to the meeting from almost all invited groups and were pleased with the fields at the meeting. Thank you to everyone in Group S, Group N, Groups O, Q, R, Groups K, L, M & Formulas Junior & 3, Formula Vee, Formula Ford, both Super Sprints and Regularity for supporting the event, and a similarly big thanks to everyone who supported our entrants for being involved as well!
In the paddock, we were joined by the Iron Mine Cruiseres, i.e. the Crookwell Car Club, who contributed a magnificent display and enjoyed a few laps of the circuit on Sunday. We thoroughly enjoyed our time together, and hope to see them join us again at a future meeting!
We were also joined by the team at Blat Pack, who ran a stall throughout the weekend and organised a roving film crew to commit our adventures to celluloid, or a digital facsimile of celluloid, at least. They’ve uploaded a video about getting involved in motorsport which features the Spring Festival and is well worth a look.
Most importantly, we would like to finish by thanking the many volunteers who support the sport, the HSRCA and our historic motorsport events. You make all of this possible, and we’re extremely grateful for all that you do. Thank you!
With that, let’s kick on and enjoy the photos. Put your feet up and spend some time clicking through the following links and enjoying the many photos contributed by the talented image makers who document our community and events.
Thank you from Richard, Rod and the HSRCA Race Committee.
Images thanks to Lee Phan, Stuart Row and Syd & Seth Reinhardt.
You can see more of Lee’s work on his Instagram page www.instagram.com/motorsportphan/, Stuart’s on his website www.transchroma.com and Mark’s at www.throttlejamphotography.com. For more from Seth or Syd, contact Seth at seth@hsrca.com.
2018 Spring Festival by Lee Phan
2018 Spring Festival by Seth Reinhardt
2018 Spring Festival by Syd Reinhardt
2018 Spring Festival by Stuart Row
2018 Spring Festival by Mark Walsh
