On Saturday they 24th of October the Terang College Race crew got to dust off the cobwebs and go racing again!!!

Literally dust off the cobwebs…..

Before and between the remote learning periods we have been working on preparing the 2 excels to go to Prosser’s Panels in Camperdown for paint, so with our regular cars out of action it was dust off the Corolla to tune up our steering skills.

Getting there was hard work, for the students getting the car ready and ensuring it was safe, as well as getting race licences up to date. For me it was getting the approval from Motorsport Australia to be able to share a car. For the Ararat Car Club getting the Covid plan complete with our exemption for sharing and an instructor all sorted.

Due to the social distancing requirements we had to run 2 session of 10 drivers, so it was a little different not knowing how competitive our times were.

We took Ben and James with us both Year 7 and now with a few events under their belts. The boys had a great day, although James struggled with nothing to do for his left foot, as Corolla is auto!!!

But the fun surface of the Ararat Airport Motorkhana made up for that pretty quickly, with it unique mixture of grip and slip, such a fun surface to drive on.

As it turns out Corolla really needed to spend some time at Bourkey’s Tyres and Brakes and More to get it to the speed of our Excels, although Mick’s Stickers has suggested strongly, the missing Terang Terrors, windscreen sticker was worth a few seconds on the day!!! James and Ben had massive smiles all day and I must admit it did feel good to be back out and using our cars instead of doing work on them. Both of our students made massive improvements in their times and really benefited from 3 runs at each course. It was great to see them get more confidence in their ability and to drive the car faster each run.

Ben managed to sneak in front of James but a mere 6.28 seconds over the event.

The resilience the whole team has shown during this year to get in and get the cars prepared in the very limited time we have had, has been amazing. Rubbing cars back in a cold windy, wintery shed has not been the best way to experience motorsport, but our dedicated team have done it and hopefully we will have both cars back to us painted soon. So next year looks like it will be our best and biggest yet, with events planned for Westmere, Ararat, Colac, Melbourne and beyond, for the students to choose from.

Thanks to Ararat Car Club, Chris Harwood, Heath Jackson (&family) and Motorsport Australia for allowing us to get back on track!! New members to the Crew are always welcome.