21st Annual Speed Week Lake Gairdner South Australia 21st -25th March 2011 THE EVENT WAS CANCELLED on Saturday 19th March after heavy rain had fallen in the 4 days leading up to the event.

The first issue for organisers arriving at the lake on the Tuesday 15th was a lack of a salt surface at the ramp ath the edge of the lake. There was just red dirt and rocks for a hundred metres and it would have been extremely difficult for any vehicles to make it to the lake surface. A Native Title inspection was scheduled for Tuesday but was rescheduled for the Thursday, as they would simply not let anyone onto the lake with the entrance in that condition. There was some water around the edge of the lake at this time, but with the Lake surface still in good condition there was still hope at this stage that the meeting could proceed.
By Thursday a monsoonal front had travelled across from Western Australia across to South Australia bringing with it heavy rain. This flooded the lake and eventually closed the road from Iron Knob to the Lake.
The Native Title inspection was pushed back several times as more rain kept falling with a final meeting planned for Sunday 20th March, but it was obvious on the Friday that the event could not proceed. Notifications were phoned through to teams in Adelaide, Port Augusta, Ceduna and Broken Hill, with only one competitor arriving without having known the event had been cancelled. As the rain continued to fall on Friday the phone did not stop ringing at the camp.

There was a General Meeting and AGM on the Sunday morning at the DLRA camp and an auction of some items at the Canteen on the Sunday night.

There would have been around 70 groups at the saltbush camp and about 50 groups at the DLRA camp. The DLRA camp was closed on Tuesday morning and the only way out was via the Kimba Road, most leaving in convoy.

More reports will follow soon.

Pre-Entries

Here is the first draft of the pre-entries for the 2011 DLRA Speed week.
NOTE: Many entrants have not provided their complete or correct class. Please contact me ASAP with details. Same goes for vehicle number, especially if it is different to your membership number. With the new timing system we cannot record your time without these details prior to your run. If we have to collect all these details during racing it's going to slow everthing down, do it now!

• Pre-Entries closed on 28/02/2011, entries are still being accepted, but will incur a $100 late entry fee.
• Record Speeds shown in BLUE are the highest speed attained for that class from all previous years
  or have never had a vehicle register a speed for that class and are considered Open.
• Timed (long track) speeds shown to 3 decimal places, speeds to be confirmed by Timer.
• GPS (short track) speeds shown to 1 decimal place.
• GPS speeds are not recognised for records
• P.B. (Personal Best) is for that entrant, in that class.

Late Entries

Looking south from the Canteen Road on Saturday night. All that red stuff should be white.	Taken just north of the ramp, you can see where the salt has been washed away	Don trying to chat up the singer in the band, oh, this is a closer look at the ramp. The tractor parked to block entry.
Not exactly the sight anyone wanted to see.	Rob and Kevin took a walk out on the lake, here they are probably 500 metres off shore, depth vairied from just a 25 to 100mm.	This was Sunday night (high tide) a lot more water.
Sunday night - looks a lot deeper	Sunday night	Sunday night
DLRA Camp Saturday, water ran right through the camp	We still had a sense of humour...	Animal tried to drive the bus in where the witches hats are and nearly got bogged!
This is going out on the good road on the Wednesday	As you can see still a lot of water	But then some spots the vehicles actually raised some dust