Round 5 of the Club Championship has been run and won, the meeting ran like clockwork. Thanks to or wonderful band of officials and volunteers. We had some nervous timekeepers to start the day, as some of our more experienced timekeepers were not available. Other than one small hiccup in qualifying the timing was faultless. The day was reasonably well attended and all entrants received great value with qualifying, 2 heats, Pre Final and a 15 lap Final.
Notable performance of the day was from Glen Williams in KA3 Masters, Glen was given a meatball flag in error in a heat race while leading. Glen accepted this error like a true gentleman and did not make a fuss. Karma was on Glen’s side though as he still went on to win the Final in a close fort event.
Our next meeting is Round 6 of the club championship, this round is back to computer grid with Practice, 3 heats, Pre final and 12 lap Final for all classes. We will combine as many classes as we can for practice so we can give each entrant a longer session on Sunday morning.
We will host the Karting Australia SP Tools Junior Sprockets program to run at Lithgow on Tuesday October 4, the program has been so well booked it is likely to run on Wednesday October 5 also. KA will run the on track activities for the day CDKC will be running the canteen, if you can help in the canteen for few hours on either of these days please let me know.
Karting Australia ran a static display at the Eastern Creek round of the V8’s promoting Karting and the Junior Sprockets program, the display was assisted by some of our club members, thank you to Kiara Beattie, Cathy Beattie and Courtney Becker for your assistance.
One of the things I am trying to work on as President is to improve the value and fun factor for all of our entrants. In the future I would love the club to be able get back to running the 2 day system for club events, for this to be viable we need to get back to having over 100 entries regularly for a single day events. In the 2 day format there is much more opportunity for entrants to run 2 classes or families to run multiple members without busting a valve running from being pit crew to race driver. Some of the initiatives we have implemented to help make our meetings run more efficiently.
- Discounted entry fee for pre entries (late entries make organising very difficult).
- Further discounted same driver second entry
- Race order will be the same at all meetings (where possible), to make this fair to all we are rotating which class starts 1st at each meeting.
- Race order will be posted ASAP after close of Pre entries
- Practice on Saturday before race day will run until 5.00pm, daylight and track conditions permitting
- We are calculating our number of class groups, number of races and number of laps with a view to be finished racing by 3.30pm and giving all entrants the best value we can.
- After racing has finished the track is available for FREE private practice, time and track conditions permitting.
- “Race monitor” is in operation at all of our meetings
Tenders are in the market now for resurfacing of the race track, we will keep you informed as to how this will affect track availability for a short time when we have dates confirmed for the work to be done. It is hoped this will take place in November but will be dependent on what is received from the tender process.
To do all of these improvements and keep the facility in top shape takes a lot of money and resources. Please remember the next time you are paying for practice, buying lunch or a beer at the canteen that all of this goes back in to Karting.
The Clyde Marshall is coming up in October, this is the clubs signature event and we have been busy securing sponsorship for some great prizes. The event will be over 2 days for all classes. We will have a dinner in the clubhouse and negotiations are under way to hold a Trivia night for a few laughs as well.
The Annual Ladies event is proposed to be on Saturday January 21 2017 and organising is well under way with ladies and girls from all over the country expected to make the pilgrimage to Lithgow. The event will again be support Breast Cancer research and will have the famous pink plate on offer for event winners, we are also going to run and open event on the day after Sunday January 22 so brothers and fathers can have a race and the girls can back up if they want more race time.
If you had a great time racing at Lithgow, tell all of your karting Friends and get them to come along and enjoy our race meetings.
See you at the track
Russell Becker
CDKC President
