Six Hours, Nineteen teams, 92 cars, of which just seven were sprites. These were the ingredients of a wonderful weekend’s worth of white knuckled racing at Mallala. The AHSDC had submitted two teams; all Sprites in Roofless Racing with Rod Wells, Sue Brice, Geoff Lawrence, Scott Burgess and myself; and a healthy mix in JPS Racing with Alan Taylor, Jeff Smith, James Peachey and Andrew Nichols. Team Managers were Peter Brice and Mike Summers/Jeff Smith respectively.

The Victorian assault arrived on Friday night, and the drivers were massaged and briefed on the nuances of the Mallala track with a video from last year’s race, before being chauffeur driven to a local restaurant for a hearty, but healthy meal.

Actually, that didn’t quite happen, but we all arrived safely in Adelaide, and set ourselves up in our accommodation, ready for open practise on Saturday.

Saturday was spent testing the cars and learning the track. Rod Wells was having trouble with his handling, but the car and driver were still putting in tidy times. My car still needed a flare, a seatbelt and a mirror before I hit the track so I missed a few of the early sessions.

Scott Burgess seemed to be coping with the track and the times he received suggested his car, Rod’s old racecar with a slightly modified 1275 engine, was performing pretty well. Geoff Lawrence was having some fun with his left hand drive Orange midget, but the clockwise track wasn’t really suited to the suspension in his car.

The orange car below has a pretty long racing history, but it been in hibernation for some years. Geoff had given the car some new oil, a charged battery and a couple of other bits before deciding to give it a run at Mallala.

Jeff Smith and Alan Taylor, veterans of this event, were turning in respectable and consistent times. I’ve heard said that Alan could race in his sleep, so I did my best to check to make sure he wasn’t asleep before I went out on the track with him. I couldn’t tell because he’d engineered a duct tape sun visor to cut out the glare, and it was such a good idea that I wanted to copy it, that I forgot to check whether his eyes were open or not.

Sue Brice was running well, so well in fact that I had difficulty passing because our cars have the same engines and a similar set up. I was quite relieved when I eventually did pass Sue to remember that she was on my team so I wouldn’t have to pass her during the event.

Rod flatted a tire and changed to his spares, and was last seen buggerizing around under his car late in the day on Saturday.

The only problem I had was the base plate on my distributor came loose, and my tacho went weird. I brought the car straight in, removed the dizzy with some help from Tony Young, and fitted some locktite to the screws holding the base plate.