Grasskhanas

Dunedin

Here is an email from Daryl Munro who owns an MR2 and is also a member of the Otago Sports Car Club. Unfortunately I missed this event but it sounds like they had a good time!!

15 March

"As for yesterday: Jason Murdoch received the email in time, so there were two MR2’s there. The event was something of a washout due to rain - it would have been just as easy on a sheet of solid ice! But, that meant it was brilliant fun. Doing 2 360 degree spins at probably less than 30 kph might give an idea of just how slippery it was. It was dry for a short while at the start, and that is the only time that anyone put in a halfway reasonable time. The winning time was 1 minute 3 seconds. By the time we ran, it was raining, and times were out to over 1:30. I Think Jason’s slowest time was 2:14. Comparatively, we did pretty well. My son Billy also ran the MR2 so there were 3 of us. We all managed 1:14 - 1:15, and at that time, I was with the timekeeper after I ran ....... no-one was quicker for that round. It finished up being almost a competition to see who could do the most 360’s in one lap, and we were right up there with the best of them. I think Billy came something like 3rd or 4th overall. On his first round, he didn’t know the course, and took a big shortcut. The timekeepers didn’t notice, and credited him with 1:07, despite everyone else being over 1:30 in that round! I took a series of 3 photos of one of Jason’s spins, but I was quite a way from him, so they may not be that great as photo’s."

Another of these events happened a few weeks later - and this time I found out about it in time!!

26 April

Well, it all started off very unorganised. Jason Murdoch rang me on the Thursday night and said he’d heard something about another Grasskarna. By the time we tried to organise a few people it was getting a bit late. Daryl who is a member of the Sports Car Club didn’t know anything about it and we were beginning to wonder if it was really on at all. Jason was supposed to confirm with me on Saturday but we never got in contact. Unfortunately Daryl couldn’t make it due to wallpapering duties!!

So, I was woken up at 8am on Sunday morning by Jason, he was keen to go - still didn’t know if it was on or not but it would be a good drive anyway (about 45mins away). So I called Bill (Daryl’s son) and let him know to meet us at our meeting spot at 9:15am - about 20 mins later I get a call from Jason. He’d been on the piss the night before and left his keys somewhere - but he couldn’t exactly remember where, so here we are driving around, trying to recognise the house that he was at the night before. After another 20mins we find it! By this stage it is after 9:15am and Bill has already left. After a few more hiccups, rotating wheels etc, we finally got out to Palmeston at about 11am!!

Luckily we weren’t too late to enter - and the event was on! We had three MR2’s out there - out of about 18 cars. Bill was already there, in his Dad’s ’84 NA and had his friend Matt who was also driving. With Jason, and Aaron driving his ’88 SC and myself, that made five drivers.

The course was apparently set out differently than the previous Grasskarna and the weather conditions were very different. The ground was quite dry and there hadn’t been a lot of rain for a while. The first drive was a ‘follow the leader’, no wheelspin, familiarisation with the course. It included a couple of short straights, some slaloms and a few tightish corners. Then it was into the racing!!

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Jason at the grasskhana having fun (note the counter steering)

We all did about the same times for our first laps (except for Bill - who must have thought you got points by ‘hitting’ cones, not avoiding them!). We were obviously all treading pretty carefully. It was surprising how much traction you could actually get in the paddock. The next run was where things started happening. Just out of interest, the second fastest car overall after the first run was an old Isuzu Gemini. Cost the guy $200, no reg or WOF, bald tires - the lot!! I think he was as surprised as everyone else!!

I was first up and went at it a lot harder. The main problem I was having was understeer. The front just didn’t want to change direction - despite dropping the tire pressures down to about 20PSI. I was doing really well - and then just lost the plot!! Coming into a corner trying just a bit hard, the front just kept going. Finally it bit and I knew that if I flicked the tail around it would set me up for the next corner. Well, the tail flicked, but a bit further than I would have liked. The next corner it just went round and then it went round again! Oh well - at least it wasn’t on State Highway 1 this time!!

By the time the third run came along, the paddock was getting pretty cut up. It was getting harder on the cars and slowing the times down a bit I think. But that was when I did my best time. I just took it a little easier and enjoyed myself!! Jason didn’t have much luck, as well as spinning, he took out a cone with his newly painted front spoiler - bummer! As for Bill, he missed the cones but went round the wrong side of them this time!

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Danny showing them how it was done

It was quite interesting that the best time out of all of us was Matt,who was driving his friends Dad’s MR2!! That’s not fair!!

There was an interesting variety of cars competing. From the rally Escort and ’88 Levin, to the Gemini and someone cruising in the work L200 ute! There were a couple of big old Falcons, a Legacy RS and 323 4WD among others.

The fastest car of the day was an ’81 Corolla Sprinter hatch. That was the guy who organised it and he knew how to drive on grass! The fastest time of the day was 1:21.59 by the Corolla. I think the three MR2’s were about mid field in the results table.

Other Events:
Before Christmas four cars made it to a BBQ just out of Palmeston. We had three Mk1’s and a Mk2. We’ve also had three Mk1’s and a Mk2 show up as the ‘support team’ for Daryl when he raced his Mk1 NA in an Otago Sports Car Club hillclimb.

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Summit Road on the Otago Peninsula, watching the hillclimb

Coming Events:
We’ve got a couple of contacts for Teretonga racetrack in Invercargill. A suggestion is to hire the track for the day and have a bit of a play - hopefully we can get this underway sometime in the next couple of months. I’d also be interested in finding a large car park and setting up a few cones for time trials. Other than that, we’ll just try and have the odd drive now and then.

Well, that’s all from me - keep up the good work on the newsletter! Spot ya’s

Danny Blair
’87 SC