2008 Events

ACT State Titles - CORMCC
Narrabundah - 15th-18th May, 2008

The ACT event was certainly an outstanding event... The only complaints I heard were in regards to mother nature herself. Practice day proved to be a beautiful sunny day, then Friday we arrived bright and early to what appeared to be an utterly sodden track, but with the hard work of all the local club members, the track was ready for our first heat only an hour after the expected start time. Every one was cold and anxious to get the qualifying heats started, and the 3 inches of mud collecting on the bottom of our shoes wasn't enough to deterr the majority of racers.

Qualifiers went along with barely a hitch in a relaxed and appreciative atmosphere. Most everyone enjoyed the technicality of the track along with the high speed straight and the fantastic jumps. The level change was a new feat for some and managed to throw people off thew first few times around, but the only real difficulty proved to be one particular spot where your vehicle disappeared from sight for a momentary second or two.

The local ACT boys certainly showed a lot of the interstate drivers that they know what they are doing, with a couple of the interstaters wondering who it was putting the pressure on them. Nick Chatz once again shone through all of his truggy heats and finished up with a close 4th, followed by fello ACT driver Dan Horne in 5th, and 6th position was filled by 16 year old Sydney Off-Road driver - Anthony Dipizio, (Locally known as "Son of Haley"???) The final podium position's all went to NSW drivers, with Ari Bakla in a clear 1st, Chris Russel in 2nd & Chris Lander close behind in 3rd spot.

With so many well known and well seasoned drivers in the 5 buggy heats, it was anyone's guess who would be taking the podium 1st at the end of the event. With such a new and undriven track, anything was likely to happen. With a start studded final, Wayne Walker showed the spectators exactly how it's done, starting in 1st on the grid, he managed to keep his number 1 spot for the entire race, bar one of the early laps where Ari Bakla caught up the bare second between them, which Wayne's unerring consistency managed to hand back to him within the next lap. It was 45 minutes of pure racing skill between the two of them, with the final result being Wayne in the podium 1st, 1 lap up on Ari in 2nd, followed closely behind by Nick Drygalla.

All in all most certainly a fantastic event. Many thanks to go out to the CORMCC club, to Jason Broers and his wife Nikki (we'll try that hazelnut thingy again sometime eh?) And also a big thanks to Dan Hoffman, who although he's generally an electric guy, he took the time out to come down and do the scrutineering, and also was a fantastic help in the pits while I ran around being click happy... John Pagden - Thanks for the much needed jacket!!! A big shout out to Ian Haley for all his help and support over time, and also to Jim Savoldi, Dane Tomaszewski, Anfo & also the local ACT boys who kept me laughing and smiling all weekend!!! With that said, the next upcoming event for Signature R/C will be the QLD State Titles in a scant 2 weeks time. So as you can imagine, SRC are extremely busy finalising the ACT photo's and posting them online, we have a select few up now, with plenty more on their way...








FEMCA 2008 - Sydney Australia