Posted By Evan on Oct 17, 2011 | 3 comments

Over the weekend we competed in the 2011 AROCA 6-Hour regularity relay.  This is the biggest event on our club calendar – and a pretty significant event in club motorsport full stop.  My team ‘The Sicilian Suds’ consisted of two Alfa Sprints, one Alfa 90, and our Alfasud Ti.  We’ve all done this event multiple times (this is my fifth time) and finished comfortably in the top half of the field, but were looking for something a bit better this year.

The event is a relay, meaning we have four cars with one car running on-track at all times.  We man the pit wall with a stop watch and lap board presenting lap times to the driver on the track each lap.  The goal is to circulate continuously collecting laps within one second of a nominated time for each driver.  A bonus lap is awarded for each lap within one second of your nominated time, but if you go faster than your nominated time you subtract one lap.  So we race around in heavy traffic (42 cars are on the track at once) trying to maintain a consistent quick lap time while overtaking slower cars and being overtaken by faster cars.  A lot harder than it sounds.

Happily we had no (major) mechanical problems, and all the drivers performed well.  Half an hour after the end of the event the results were presented, with the event secretary reading the results in reverse order.  When our team had not been read until the top ten, we were very excited.  When we hadn’t been called out until the top five, we were all very anxious indeed!  Finally we were called out as the fourth-placed team, and the top placed Alfa team – a fantastic result for our team!  It’s a very competitive event, and a lot of teams take it a lot more seriously than we do – so we’re all pretty pleased with doing so well.

Now what to change for next year?