Mt Buller Sprint, What happened last weekend Options

[Downunderman]

Mt Buller Sprint Report.

Drove down last Thursday 20th took about 9 hours. Towed the teener behind the wife’s Volvo 850 wagon, which did it remarkably well.

Friday 21st was a late start followed by scrutineering, documentation, safety briefing and then 2 runs around the Prologue stage. This all happened at Mansfield which is at the bottom of the mountain.

Sat 22nd the plan was that we would have 2 runs up the 16.5km mountain stage to the top of Mt Buller each morning and afternoon on both Sat and Sun. Anyway Saturday started well but when we got down the mountain to the start of the stage we found that we had sprung an oil leak, which turned out to be a pin hole in the steel line to the chain tensioner on the distributor side. After weighing up the options we drove back to Mansfield (30km) and burnt 4 litres of oil on the exhaust. A friendly Nissan dealer was found where we pulled it apart and silver soldered the pipe. After serious degreasing we returned to the start in time for the afternoon runs.

The first run was just a little bit ragged and only an average time, but considering the morning’s frenetic activity generally acceptable. After our run we were standing at the top spectating when the field stopped coming through. It turned out that a Nissan 240Z had gone over the edge and the safety crews were getting them out. This took a fair while (they went down 80m landed on the roof and caught on fire, both OK) and the organizers ran out of road closure time, so we missed our second run.

Sunday 23rd. 2 great runs in the morning each faster that the previous. Ist run in the afternoon things really came together and we got under 11 mins. Got down to the bottom of the hill for the second run and the whole field is held at the start while safety cars head of up the mountain. Ultimately the final run is cancelled because the road is melting in the heat!! It was a bit tacky looking on the way down. Transpired that the alpine mix bitumen couldn’t handle 2 days at 27 C without getting very soft. Well lubricated presentation dinner followed.

Monday 24th very boring drive home.

A great event that I would definitely do again. Some pics follow. Does anyone have some place I can upload about 42mb/11mins of video of our final run?? Its pretty epic!!

How.

See www.mtbullersprint.com