Inevitable Evora! LOTUS:09 - Lotus Club Queensland

15/09

October 2009

$8.00

Inevitable

Evora!

LOTUS:09

& Clubman Notes

The Official Magazine of

Lotus Club Victoria &

Lotus Club Queensland

Features:

EMRs

Speed on Tweed

Morgan Centenary

Alpine A110 - part 2

Another top weekend of racing. A bit cool in the

mornings with frost everywhere as per the photo with

Allan and Captain Graham Palmer (Recruiting Officer)

scraping the ice from the roof of my XR6 Falcon.

Beautiful warm days, but a lot of dust from all the

Leyburn

Sprints

cars driving around on the grassed areas.

Last time I raced here was in my Lotus Cortina

for the 50th anniversary in 1999. How good it is

to watch my son carry on from where I left off at

the 60th anniversary. He did real well with a first

Sat 15th and Sun 16th Aug 2009

by Garry Saunderson.

in class and 67th outright (200 cars entered) in

the old 1964 Cortina.

I am in the Army Reserve and we parked

the car with our recruiting display and Allan

raced while I recruited for the reserve. A racing weekend and

getting paid for it, there should be more of that.

The car never missed a beat all weekend, but when I got home and removed

the wheels I found 2 racing tyres with the tread lifting off them from the rough

bitumen. Changed the wheels and checked everything and the car is now ready for

the Speed on Tweed weekend on the 5th of September.

Check out the photos of the two announcers sitting on a bale of hay above the

track. That looked a bit different. We had a chat to Dick and Steve Johnson (V8

Super cars) who were racing a Mk1 Escort and a XY GT Falcon. I also bumped into

Kevin Bartlett and got him to sign the official 2009 program with Dick and Steve

- refer pictures of the 60th (2009) and the 50th (1999) anniversary program¡¯s.

Another famous driver in attendance from the 1960¡¯s was Brian Mitchellmore who

used to race Lotus Cortina¡¯s, GT Falcons and Alfas. He was also driving in the same

Escort as Dick and Steve Johnson.

Interesting photo of Allan and some of the cars lined up on the dummy grid in

front of Shane Webckes (rugby league legend) Leyburn Pub. You could have a beer

and be about 2 meters from the cars. Where else in Australia can you do that?

That¡¯s it for now, till the next race meeting.

Track Announcer

Page 12

Lotus & Clubman Notes October 2009

Ice on the roof

Shane Web

cke's Pub -

Dummy Grid

Alan ready to go

Army Recruiting centre

Another track announcer

Alan in action

Lotus & Clubman Notes October 2009

Page 13

Speed on

Tweed ¨C

Sat 6th and Sun 7th Sept 2009

by Garry Saunderson.

We stayed at the back packers in town about 10

minutes walk from the track for $30 each a night

right on the river. The place was run by a nice old guy

called Tassy Duff. Saturday morning 0600 it rained

like hell for 30 minutes and we thought ¡°here we go

Allan at the start

we will be slipping and sliding all weekend on a wet

track¡±, but it cleared in about 60 minutes into a nice

cloudy day. When we arrived at the track there were

a few tents blown down on top of the cars. Plenty of

smashed cars over the weekend.

We had 6 people in the pit crew Allan (driver),

Alice his girl-friend, Graham, Kevin, Jim and myself.

Plus we had Bill Ferrier and his wife Diane up from

Geelong giving us a bit of a hand over the weekend.

Bill has a couple of MK1 Cortina¡¯s he races down

south and is going to enter one in the next Speed on

Tweed.

Allan was in the class for 1961 to 1964 under 2

Graham's EK Holden

litre sedans. We had 6 runs for the weekend. The

first run was 51 seconds and Allan slowly went down

to the last run of a 48.8 which put him 3rd in class

behind two Mini Coopers at 48.5 and 48.1. Allan¡¯s

best time last year was a 49.3, so it was good to

lower it a bit more. Mods to the car since last year

were to lift the front of the car 50mm, install a close

ratio gearbox and remove the 10.2kg clutch and

pressure plate and fit one that weights 8.2 kgs.

I have put in a couple of pics of some of the cars

Oops, a casualty

Oops, a bit of oversteer

that were racing. Also I have included a pic of

Graham¡¯s 1961 EK Holden which he has for sale at

$25,000. It has a 307 Chev motor, turbo 400 auto,

disc brake front end and a Volvo disc brake rear end

and it goes like the clappers. Nice and legal with all

modification papers supplied. He can be contacted

on 0439 027 270.

That¡¯s it for now. The next event is the Oakey

sprints later this month.

See ya Saundo

Allan and pit crew

Lotus & Clubman Notes October 2009

Page 17

John Barram rounding Taylors corner

Speed on Tweed Sept 2009

by John Lungren

We were not expecting the event to be held this year, after Super

this was because of the WRC cars using the same circuit for their night

Organiser, Entrepreneur and Historic Racer Roger Ealand had decided

special stages and therefore had extra barriers in some places. The only

after seven years that 2008 was the Last Hurrah, but back we were in

complaint I heard was Patrick saying that the 340R was spinning wheels

conjunction with WRC Repco Rally Australia and now organised by the

everywhere because of the ten year old tyres on Derek¡¯s car (was this true

Murwillumbah Rotary Club.

or was it just a case of too much wellie?)

Friday is set up car covers, the Lotus Hilton and get cars scrutinised etc.

Friday and Saturday night we watched the Rally cars and the WRC cars

Mike & Maggie Goodfellow got out of bed early and were down there at

which were VERY FAST. In fact, if we knew their time for our part of the

8am to bag one of the few spots still available. This is a very popular event

full circuit (they did two laps+) it would make most of the Speed on

and some of the 180 competitors claimed their real estate days before!

Tweed runners look hopeless. We missed the dining and entertainment

Our LCQ members were John Barram and myself in our Lotus S2 Sevens,

that filled the main street at previous events and has been such a big part

Patrick Mewing in Derek Dean¡¯s 340R (as Patrick¡¯s super quick light weight

of years past, but I understand that when the Rally alternates with NZ

Elan is still in need of an engine), Mike Goodfellow in his lovely Talisman FJ

every second year we will have that social sc¨¨ne back next year.

repaired after breaking a drive shaft at Morgan Park and Allan Saunderson

The spot that Mike & Maggie claimed was right beside the loop road

in his Cortina GT. Also waving the flag for Lotus were Ken Gray in his

where all the competing cars came past to start and also attracted lots of

supercharged Lotus Seven replica and Ron Woodbridge¡¯s Lotus 23 replica.

Lotus members, past Lotus owners and racers and interested onlookers.

Our small group had a good weekend with no damage to any of our

One bloke came in and told us about his mate who had owned MGs and a

cars. I say this because of the extraordinary number of bent cars over

Lotus 6. He had just sold all the MGs but had kept the 6 on the wall in his

the weekend, maybe 30 of more, which caused a lot of hold ups. I think

shed. John Barram was quick to ask HOW WAS HIS HEALTH !!!!

the track was narrower in places than it has previously been. Maybe

Page 18

Lotus & Clubman Notes October 2009

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