After 4 months of Covid delays, and the threat of being washed out, the 2021 Ryde Cup SuperSprint presented by Campbelltown Hobbies has been run and won!
This will be a long one, so buckle up!
Firstly, we need to say thank you to all the racers that attended the meeting. We had a crazy idea to try something new, and we think it worked pretty well. There was awesome racing all day, not only in the top heats, but there was great racing all the way through to the C-Mains. It was great to see everyone enjoying themselves. Despite the tricky evolving track conditions, we did end up with a nice groove in the clay.
Before we go any further, we must thank a few people. Firstly, Campbelltown Hobbies who have been a long-time supporter of our club and managed to organise some extra raffle prizes after we had to reschedule. Secondly, we need to thank the Canteen Volunteers, who gave up their time over the weekend to serve the hungry racers some absolutely delicious food! So, thanks again to Alison, Bowie, Rhia and Louise for serving everyone on Sunday, as well as Jenny and Christine for all their prep work at home on Saturday. Finally, thanks to the Thomas family for arriving at the track at 4am with us on Sunday to roll the track in preparation for the day of racing. It was a massive help, and reduced the workload on the committee, so massive thanks again!
On to the event. As all who attended would know, we managed to organise for the City of Ryde Deputy Mayor Roy Maggio to come out for the morning and judge our concourse and experience what SRCCC has to offer the community. There were plenty of entries in the concourse and all the cars were looking excellent! Thank you very much to everyone who participated. Our winner was Bradd Vercoe with a retro themed Tamiya buggy! We also managed to convince Roy to get out on track to do some laps with the SRCCC club car, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Having Roy attend was a massive step for the club and will hopefully go a long way to helping us upgrade the facility.
We are very happy with how the racing turned out under the new format. Shaking up the grids and putting drivers in different situations to what they may be used to. The no-drop format for finals made for exciting racing all the way up to the very end. Proving consistency is the key. The other big change was running an open class. We saw lots of people try different setup including running boost, turbo, or even mod motors for the first time. It was great to see everyone enjoy themselves and show the gap between stock and mod isn’t as big as most people think.
Now for the results;
2WD Junior Stock: The class of future stars! A field of 9 drivers set out for victory. It was awesome to see some great racing, and in fact, these junior races had some of the best racing of the whole day! Lachlan Williams showed a phenomenal display of driving by TQ-ing and winning all 4 rounds. The battle for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th was tight with only 4-points separating the three of them. In the end it was William Byrne taking second, and Mia Thomas taking out 3rd place overall.
2wd Open: It was the Lachlan Donnelly show for 7 of the 8 runs for the 2wd class. He TQ’d all four qualifiers and won the first three finals. He was leading the 4th final until a mechanical fault ended in a DNF and putting a stop to his clean sweep of the event. Dave Warner capitalised, and proved consistency was key by taking the win in the 4th final and jumping to the top of the points table. Bradd Vercoe made it onto the podium in 3rd place.
4wd Open: The Lachlan Donnelly show resumed in the 4wd buggy class. This time however, the Team Associated driver took the clean sweep, taking all 4 TQ places, and dominating all 4 finals. Dave Warner was again consistent taking second overall. Dallas Gardiner took home the final piece of hardware in 3rd place.
540 Buggy: Well, this was a fun one! The idea of this class was to not take it too seriously. So, we had some fun with the participants. Qualifying was set as normal, but each final had a different challenge involved, with the drivers only learning their fate as they arrived at the grid. The first final would be a reverse grid with a “Joker Lap”. One joker lap was permitted, cutting out half the track after stopping in the “Joker Zone”. The second final was the “Backwards Grid” race. The drivers would start in their normal grid positions, but the cars AND drivers all started facing the wrong way, meaning they had to turn around on the driver’s stand, then perform a U-turn on the track before commencing the race. The third final was the “Driver Trivia” round. It was a reverse grid start with drivers being quizzed with trivia questions while they were racing. An incorrect answer would result in a stop-go in the penalty box. The final race was the most important race of the day, with the winner being awarded the coveted “Cabanossi Cup”. A free cup of cabanossi from our special Ryde Cup SuperSprint menu. This race saw a rolling start behind a pace car (The club car driven by Steve Snedden from Campbelltown Hobbies), just for something a little different. We also threw the joker lap back in for some extra fun. An extra Massive thanks to these guys for being good sports and making everyone laugh across the day, and giving Matt something to do on the microphone. In the end, it was Chris Taylor taking the win with, the legend himself, Ray Wood in second, and Chad Annetts rounding out the podium.
The new committee decided that we’d like to start a new tradition. So, what better way to do that, than with the Ryde Cup! This will be a perpetual trophy, which will have the name of each winner engraved onto it! It seemed to be a hit judging by the reaction of the crowd when it was revealed. The winner of the Cup was decided by combining 2wd and 4wd points, and it was really a one man show for this one. Lachlan Donnelly pretty much owned the race meeting and took home a nice piece of hardware to prove it! Congrats to Lachlan, the inaugural Ryde Cup SuperSprint champion!
Congrats to all the winners, and thanks to everyone who showed up to race! We thoroughly enjoyed putting on an event for everyone to enjoy. All the excellent feedback we’ve received keeps us going and trying to improve again for next time. So be sure to mark this one down for next year, you won’t want to miss it!
Anyway, the committee needs sleep. But keep your eyes peeled because we are heading back to Saturday night racing! We will have a special announcement with more information about it all soon.
Cheers – SRCCC Committee