MG Motoring 2018 November 2018 WEB-opt | Page 32

MG Car Club of South Australia MG RACING NEWS From..Laurie Houghton MG RACING IN VICTORIA he week end of 28/29/30 Septem- ber saw Rodney Gibb and Trevor Dunford competing at Philip Island in round 5 of the Victorian State Circuit Racing Championships, Rob Hall and myself were crew for Rodney while Dean Pitman was Trevors crew, we all arrived on the Thursday afternoon after the long drive from Adelaide and settled in to our accommodation. Friday morning was setting up both cars in a pit straight garage ready for a day of practice, Trevor driving the ex Troy Ryan Blue " Group S" MGBGTV8 and Rodney the big black MGZT520 V8, at the Island there is always a threat of rain and while there were a few light showers, there was no need to resort to wet weather tyres. Both cars performed well, albeit the ZT had a stop light issue which Rob and I sorted, Trevor had only just installed reworked rear springs and a telescopic/ hard spring combination to his front end from Greg Nolan at Suspension Con- cepts in NSW and couldn't believe the improvement in the cars handling. Saturday saw 12 MG and Invited British race cars that had entered for the round, not as big a field as we see at Sandown, I think some of these Vics see travelling to Philip Island as a long drive ! there were 6 MGV8's, 3 Triumph V8's and 3 MGZR's, unfortunately one of the MGV8's had to withdraw with overheating issues, during the Saturday morning qualifying. The three competitive races, one Satur- day afternoon and two on Sunday went without a hitch for our two members with Rodney a second place in event 1 and a third place in event 2, Trevor was 8th in round one and two, not sure what place in round 3. Greg Nolan was con- stantly in touch with Trevor advising him what adjustments to make to the shocker settings as he was watching the results in real time from the Natsoft web- site We packed up and drove back to Mel- bourne Sunday afternoon staying at Sandown before the long trek home on Monday morning, The next and last in- terstate round is at Sandown on the 8- 11th of November. T These events have a lot of categories, one of which is Sports Cars, and a new addition to the this category arrived on the weekend for it’s initial shakedown, a white SIN R1 GT owned by Richard Bendall, former owner of the Motech range of after market programmable computers . The SIN R1 is a sports car made by Bul- garian manufacturers SIN Cars. FIA cer- tified tube frame construction, carbon fiber body and active rear spoiler. It came with a 3 different engine choices – LS3 (6.2 liter N/A V8), LS7 (7.0 liter N/A V8) and a LS9 (6.2 liter supercharged). Transmission is only one 6 speed man- ual. The car weight is just 1250 kg (2 755 lbs) and has a top speed of 300 km/ h (187mp/h). The Sports car category is largely domi- nated by the Audi R8 LMS Ultra how- ever on the weekend the SIN won race three on Sunday from a field of 3 or 4 Audi’s, not bad for it’s first outing. Rumoured to cost in the order of $ 380.000 30