CORRECTION - The Munchen Skid-Pad time I gave in earlier post was only for one of their laps. I guess their other lap was the ~4.90 s, thus giving them an official averaged time of 4.758 seconds. Still quite (TU-) FAST!
~~~o0o~~~
SUNDAY.
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Day starts cloudy but not raining. However, track is wet from overnight rains.
Spectator friendliness of track is abyssmal. Spectators at ground level, behind fence, so must stand to see. Only a small section of track is visible from any vantage point.
For reference, AutoX and Enduro tracks (both same) apparently ~1,150 metres long. Good lap-times (see below) are ~1m 20s, or ~80 seconds, so the "average speed" for the fastest cars is ~52 kph.
~o0o~
AUTOCROSS.
===========
Track still wet in areas, so cars running "wets" or "inters". (To be honest, with nowhere to sit I didn't take any notes and have now forgotten if it was officially declared "wet", or otherwise?)
Many cars struggling to either start or finish their laps. This entirely due to the teams, and nothing to do with the weather.
MOST INTERESTING (below are raw times, so not including any cone penalties):
#E31 Munchen, at mass = 157 kg, fastest at 1:19.17.
#66 Monash-C, at mass = ?, second fastest at 1:19.30, so barely a tenth-second behind.
#E65 Monash-E, at mass = 274 kg, third fastest at 1:19.78, so only six-tenths behind, DESPITE BEING +117 kg HEAVIER THAN MUNCHEN!!!
#13 Canterbury, fourth at 1:23.41.
#14 Curtin, fifth at 1:23.74.
Then increasingly large gaps to the rest.
~o0o~
ENDURANCE.
===========
Thunderous rumbling of black clouds on horizon, starting ~12 noon.
Intermittent rain kicks-in ~1.00 pm, just as first teams go out. Starting order is "fastest in AutoX go first", so this will get interesting! Keep this in mind if puzzled by Natsoft lap-times.
Several of these top teams do a mid-Enduro tyre change, from slicks to inters or wets.
Munchen come in for such a tyre change, but some of the aluminium-hubs/motors are TOO HOT, so expand, and the carbon-wheel-shells are stuck! So the slicks go back on, and car goes back out onto wet track.
Rain stops, sun shines, track dries, just as the mid-field cars start going out. Hence many mid-field-cars lapping faster than top-cars.
Parked cars start populating the infield. I counted about six by the time it was all over. For example,
#E88 RMIT-E - VERY fast for many laps, then inverter problem.
#E42 UQ-E - reasonable times, then driver pushing on both pedals at same time, so software stop, then driver forgot proper restart procedure!
#12 RMIT-C - steering-geometry is set-up better than yesterday, but still too much adverse castor-camber coupling, but this irrelevant because on fourth lap a front upright/axle failure.
And others...
~o0o~
Having spent all day standing up, which was necessary to see at least some of the racing, I didn't bother standing around waiting for the presentations. These always far too drawn-out and boring. But I'm guessing that overall results for top places, as well as further down the ladder, were likely influenced by Zeus&Co. Will find out when final results appear on the various FB pages.
So right now is pizza time. Or maybe chinese?
Driver-swap day tomorrow.
Z