The 16th August 2015 Khanacross and Motorkhana results

An early morning shower again made the track slippery to start with, but as the track dried out it gripped up nicely and some fast times were recorded.

In an effort to streamline procedings and get more runs in a new format was trialed. After their first run each driver would remain in the garage and do a second run back to back. The down side to this would be a slightly longer wait between runs.

After winning the last event by less than half a second over Greg Erwin in his Nissan 180 SX, Steve Van der Brug brought his WRX up from Cairns for a run.

The benefits of four wheel drive were immediately obvious with Steve setting some blistering times. Greg did manage to beat Steve on the first run, but the only time he was beaten after that was when he incurred a penalty for hitting a witches hat.

After 13 runs Steve finished twenty two seconds clear of Greg to win the event on 698 seconds. Despite trying gallantly all day to match the speed of the Suby, Greg’s little Nissan Micra was no match to the turbo 4WD.

His second place time of 720 seconds was still an impressive thirty-three seconds ahead of third place.

Justin Van Dyk pushed his Mossman Computing Hyundai Excel to the limits and on one occasion way past them, to claim third spot on a time of 753 seconds.

At only their third event, Buddy King and Mathew Jacobson showed that they are quickly coming to grips with the NQ Towing Subaru, finishing fourth and sixth outright respectively and beating car owner Richard Teeling who could only manage twelfth spot.

Splitting the Subaru drivers for fifth spot was junior competitor, Kara North. This was a very impressive drive from Kara and her best result to date.

After starting the event with an instructor, Ashton Davenport showed how his confidence is growing by kicking Northy out of passenger seat and doing most of the junior motorkhana on his own. He reckons that he went faster without Northy, something to do with less weight he said.

The verdict on the new format? A definite thumbs up from all the drivers. The general consensus was that doing the back to back runs was that the first run was a chance to sus the track out and the second run was a chance to hit the track flat out.

Some facts: Last event 25 drivers, 7 runs, total racing time, just over 3 hours
This event 20 drivers, 13 runs, total racing time over 4 ½ hours