Khanacross 14th June

15/06/2015

A cold and clear June Sunday morning dawned for the second LCC Khanacross for the year. Whilst it may have been winter, no rain had fallen for a month or so and the ground conditions resembled the dusty height of summer.
27 drivers brought out their weapons for a chance to get sideways and race the clock over eight tests. Several of the drivers were new to competition and a good proportion were juniors too.
Whilst most of the tests may have seemed familiar to those that have competed previously, slight changes on some of the routes caught a few out. On his first run through the Eagles Nest test Neil Trethowen (Excel) found a small tyre wall and added 25 seconds of penalties to his score card. He wasn’t alone though as five other drivers found markers around the first tests and even the slightest excursion into the freshly seeded paddocks would earn a wrong way.

Early in the day electrical system faults seemed to be a common theme. First Mitch Gray (Pulsar SSS) discovered his alternator had gone south and then Ashleigh and Liam Turton had similar issues with their Excel. After pushing some charge in via a donor vehicle and jump leads, Mitch did complete one test, however a little too much enthusiasm resulted in a breakage in the driveline and that was that. The Turton Excel was found to be a blown charge fuse and midway through the day, the car re-entered and saw the day through.

Broken strut tops also came to the fore on this event. Scott Wakefield/Paul Johnson broke both their front tops in their Ford Laser. It was the second time in as many events the problem had occurred. Mika Connor also broke a strut top in his Corolla and opted not to continue after the half way point.

By the lunch time break several were carefully studying the results. The morning tests had been longer in length and to make up places later in the day would mean keeping it neat and quick.

The afternoon tests were based around our salt flats. One test was completely new and a “drifter’s paradise” for rear wheel drive cars. Sure enough Todd Payne and Aydin Zykowski put on a great show in their turbo Nissan Silvia. Todd had managed to hold the tail out almost all the way round the test throwing rooster tails of dirt skyward before the last two corners caught him out and he dropped a couple of seconds.

When the final results were tabulated, the times during the day were extremely tight. Many were split by less than a few seconds.

Amongst the ladies, Karen Russell (X2 Excel) took the honours over Dannielle Turton (X3 Excel) with Tiana Chapman third, sharing the car with Karen. The junior battle was strong too, with Damon Keltie (Pulsar SSS) edging out Jayden Clarke in the same car.

In the outright standings Silvia man Todd finished the day in 10th place just 0.17 seconds off ninth. Neil had grabbed ninth place by less than the blink of an eye however without his earlier penalty, he would have been on the podium.
During the day there were two green Excels that spent every second of competition on the rev limiter. The first of those cars was driven by Brad Nowell, who garnered eighth place. Ben Kitchen in his Mitsubishi Lancer matched the other screaming green Excel driven by Jace Van Sar Loos. The times went right down to the wire, so close in fact that the pair managed the improbable feat of sharing seventh place. Richard Nowell who shared the car with father Brad, drove to sixth. Paul Walker brought his Ford Escort rally car out for this event and was rewarded with fifth place. It was the first time Paul had driven rear wheel drive at a club event in more than ten years. Rohan Keltie drove well to fourth place, sharing the car with Jace and his father Mark who took third. Neal Johnson was fresh from an autocross the day before where he secured a solid result. At this event he drove neatly and quickly, bringing his Hyundai Lantra to second place. Since the end of last year Andrew Percival had been stating that 2015 would be a year of fun and maybe some competition if a large rear wheel drive car came up cheaply. In the last week a 90’s Honda Civic came up for the right price and the statement was withdrawn. With a game face on, Andrew drove hard and won the Khanacross by just under 11 seconds.