Leadfoot

[Donovan]

I had the immense pleasure of being invited to run my car in an event down at Rod Millen's Leadfoot Ranch this weekend.

After marshalling at all the official festival events, walking it a number of times, and cruising over it a few times in the car, I thought I knew the layout of the track reasonably well. I was wrong.

Doing this run at speed is completely different than just "cruising" over it. Suddenly there are bumps and humps you just didn't realise are there, kinks you don't see till the last moment till you come over a rise, and by then if you didn't know it was there, it's too late, because your car weighs about 1/4 of what it did a second ago.

This is one highly technical track, and you have to treat it with a lot of respect, because it will bite you very hard, very quickly if you don't. Everytime I have marshalled there, we have had at least 6 offs a day (3 day event) and a few of those are majors. And this is not from your average Jo Blow either, these are from seasoned racers like Angus Fog, Clark Proctor, Steve Murphy and smoking Jo McAndrew.

Rod Millen was at our drivers briefing in the morning, and reminded us that this course (only 1.6km) is highly technical and takes no prisoners, and that the trees are all still standing but many cars aren't.

We where all quickly reminded of this on the first round, however in this car, the tree won't survive, and neither did the car. The victim was a AE86 Levin with a Lexus V8 in it, the incident started to happen just before the finish line where there is a blind kink that if you don't see will spit your car off into the trees on the left hand side, and that's what happened, just at about 140kph. The car (fully race prepped with full roll cage) was instantly turned into a banana, and the driver pushed to the middle of the car with seat and all, as it hit the tree on the drivers door. Fortunately he had the harness mounted to the roll cage, rather than the car floor, so it moved with the driver, seat and cage otherwise I don't think he would have survived. As it was he had to be cut out of the car, and taken away in the Westpac helicopter with mulitple suspected broken bones and neck injury (was wearing a HANS kneck brace).

Needless to say this took up a major part of the day, and the 6 runs we were supposed to have, turned into 3.

Other than that incident, it was an awesome day, I ended up finishing about middle of the pack, which was pretty good considering some of the drivers/cars I was up against, and that I was just running on my crappy street tyres, I did however kiss a hay bale on the last run (was also my quickest run) so have a wee dent in the back of the car to remember the experience by.

Some of the cars their were a mint (well wasn't by the end of the day after the rear drivers side had an argument with one of the trees) KP62 starlet with a Hybusa engine and gearbox, a Suzuki Swift with a Hybusa mid mounted, running RWD, a Hillman Avenger with a highly modded P76 V8, and a whole raft of other mixed up cars.

Forgot my camera for the day, so never got some in car footage, but here is a youtube video of Mark Parson's in his Rover V8 powered TR7 and you might get a bit more of an idea of the course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inMS1fXuVrw

And a run with Emma Gilmore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9c_yU3wscI

and someone who thought it would be a good idea to have a go in a drag car, those things aren't known for going around corners

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWhilacxpvg

[MrGrey]

wow, sounds like amazing fun!

I wish the injured driver a speedy recovery.

[Stevo]

I had the immense pleasure of being invited to run my car in an event down at Rod Millen's Leadfoot Ranch this weekend.

After marshalling at all the official festival events, walking it a number of times, and cruising over it a few times in the car, I thought I knew the layout of the track reasonably well. I was wrong.

Doing this run at speed is completely different than just "cruising" over it. Suddenly there are bumps and humps you just didn't realise are there, kinks you don't see till the last moment till you come over a rise, and by then if you didn't know it was there, it's too late, because your car weighs about 1/4 of what it did a second ago.

This is one highly technical track, and you have to treat it with a lot of respect, because it will bite you very hard, very quickly if you don't. Everytime I have marshalled there, we have had at least 6 offs a day (3 day event) and a few of those are majors. And this is not from your average Jo Blow either, these are from seasoned racers like Angus Fog, Clark Proctor, Steve Murphy and smoking Jo McAndrew.

Rod Millen was at our drivers briefing in the morning, and reminded us that this course (only 1.6km) is highly technical and takes no prisoners, and that the trees are all still standing but many cars aren't.

We where all quickly reminded of this on the first round, however in this car, the tree won't survive, and neither did the car. The victim was a AE86 Levin with a Lexus V8 in it, the incident started to happen just before the finish line where there is a blind kink that if you don't see will spit your car off into the trees on the left hand side, and that's what happened, just at about 140kph. The car (fully race prepped with full roll cage) was instantly turned into a banana, and the driver pushed to the middle of the car with seat and all, as it hit the tree on the drivers door. Fortunately he had the harness mounted to the roll cage, rather than the car floor, so it moved with the driver, seat and cage otherwise I don't think he would have survived. As it was he had to be cut out of the car, and taken away in the Westpac helicopter with mulitple suspected broken bones and neck injury (was wearing a HANS kneck brace).

Needless to say this took up a major part of the day, and the 6 runs we were supposed to have, turned into 3.

Other than that incident, it was an awesome day, I ended up finishing about middle of the pack, which was pretty good considering some of the drivers/cars I was up against, and that I was just running on my crappy street tyres, I did however kiss a hay bale on the last run (was also my quickest run) so have a wee dent in the back of the car to remember the experience by.

Some of the cars their were a mint (well wasn't by the end of the day after the rear drivers side had an argument with one of the trees) KP62 starlet with a Hybusa engine and gearbox, a Suzuki Swift with a Hybusa mid mounted, running RWD, a Hillman Avenger with a highly modded P76 V8, and a whole raft of other mixed up cars.

Forgot my camera for the day, so never got some in car footage, but here is a youtube video of Mark Parson's in his Rover V8 powered TR7 and you might get a bit more of an idea of the course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inMS1fXuVrw

And a run with Emma Gilmore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9c_yU3wscI

and someone who thought it would be a good idea to have a go in a drag car, those things aren't known for going around corners

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWhilacxpvg

Impressive speeds, specially the triumph