The PROVISIONAL results for Speed Week 2018 are now available for download at
http://www.dlra.org.au/2018.htm.
It will take me several days to compile the results into an official version, this is mainly due to a number of last minute class changes by entrants.
So don't jump up and down just yet if your class is not what you ran.
Success can be measured in a number of ways. The changes that we made for this year have all fortunately paid off big time. Plus all the officials and volunteers were fantastic this year, most had a real can-do attitude and it showed in the number of runs we were able to produce.
In the timing van Brice and Peter tell me that they were able to train the volunteers and leave them to it and for the first time they had more than enough people in the van. The new queuing software worked a treat and with the implementation of the pre-stage made managing the timing system much better.
We have never had entrants getting 3 and 4 runs on a Monday. PS Gary it was 199 runs for both tracks on the Monday. We set a new event of over 850 runs for the week, with track 2 being closed on the Friday with no one lining up.
This year all personnel at the start line were volunteers, Arthur De Main and his team on the Monday and Norm Hardinge and his team on Tuesday, they set the scene for a really tight start line. It took a little while for entrants to get their head around the centre streamliner lane on track 1, but once they saw how it was to be used it also worked very well. Special mention to Harry De Ree who spent a lot of time as track 2 starter and did a fantastic job.
The revised pre-stage was manned by Norm Bradshaw and his team for the first couple of days and Carol Dent volunteered for several days "herding the cats". Now that everyone is familiar with this and some minor adjustments for next year, this will be running very smoothly.
The car and motorcycle inspectors were ready and available to do tech on the Friday, but most entrants did not turn up until the Sunday, making it a very hectic day. Entrants need to understand that they can't turn up late Sunday and expect to run Monday morning.
Another new idea that worked well was running all the Rookies on track 2 first thing Monday morning. There was more than 60 rookies this year and we had nearly all of them signed off by the lunch break.
The overwhelming comments from our International Competitors was that our event was world class and that given the opportunity they would be back again. They were very impressed with competency and diligence our medical and rescue teams and were amazed by the professionalism of the organisation and our volunteers.
There was a real vibe this year and we, the collective, inclusive we, have put the world of land speed racing on notice. We can put on a world standard event and have fun doing it.
The catch phrase for next year is "DLRA Speed Week 2019, like Bonneville was 20 years ago", how does that sound?