Pick Ten: McRae Rallysprint 2012/2013 Summer Series Final

Last night was the last round of the 2012/13 McRae Rallysprint Summer Series, and I decided to shoot the event from spectator accessible areas for the night.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 24 mm

This was the least 'spectator accessible' point of the night, although it's possible to stand just the other side of the cars as a spectator.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/60s @ f/4, 58 mm

This is an awesome event for drivers and spectators, with plenty of action on the track and for the drivers, 4 runs around the course over approximately 3.5 hours.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 50 mm

When I was just starting to get into motorsport, Rolly Waters was king of the Under 2 litre Street Cars at Wanneroo in his hot little Escort.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 45 mm

One day I will own an old Porsche. I'll probably also end up sleeping in it, unless I sell a few cars first.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 45 mm

Jai Philp runs the No Limits events at Wanneroo, and has built this Celica to run in the WASCC's Improved Production class.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 45 mm

Monica Jakovich in the car Geoff Duckworth ran at the WASCC's Night Masters this year.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 50 mm

Alistair McRae doesn't just lend his name to the event, here he is driving the 0 car, the last course checker before each round of racing.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 47 mm

I love this car, I don't know a lot about it or it's history, but I know that I love the agressive 70's style flares and the 70's style rally paint.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 45 mm

The next rallysprint event at the Motorplex is the McRae Motorsports 'off season' event, on July 21st, and the full series will return next summer.


Canon EOS-1D Mark III - 1/100s @ f/4, 35 mm

Even with the upgraded brakes it's wearing, this ute was still able to get the rotors glowing into the chicanes.

More ReplayXD Videos

Over the last couple of weeks, I've done a bit more experimentation with the ReplayXD 1080 and the Camzilla mount. I've put it on a few mates cars while they've been out having some fun, and I've set it up as a fixed camera and made a time lapse video as well.


This first video was the first time I fitted the camera to the outside of a car competing in a motorsport event. This is Franz Esterbauer's Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 MR, and he's competing in the first round of the McRae Motorsports Twilight Rallysprint Series, held at the Perth Motorplex. Franz has always done pretty well at these events, and this run was no exception, Franz's quickest run of the night, it was also good enough to help him win the event. The experimentation side of things, saw me running the camera with an exposed microphone opening, which I have since realised was not such a good idea, and as a result, I've had to overdub this video with some music to hide the deathly silence left behind after I muted the sound from the ReplayXD the instant Franz leaves the start line. If you want an idea of how bad the wind noise was, watch the video to the very end, as I left the original audio intact as Franz drives off from the stop control.


The next video we have today is from Gerrin Good's 'TYAFRYA' burnout car. TYAFRYA is a methanol fueled Ford XE Falcon, and Gerrin's certainly not afraid to swing the big ol' girl around on the burnout pad. For this video, I had covered the microphone opening with a small sticker, supplied by ReplayXD with the camera for that purpose, I also turned down the microphone gain to 25db to see if that helped. As you will pick up while watching the video, there are still some noise issues with this setup, either wind noise or the sticker vibrating.


For the next attempt, I replaced the flimsy sticker with some good old race tape and fixed the ReplayXD 1080 to the side of Nathan Hollis' "TANK" burnout Sigma. This is where I'd wanted to put the camera on Gerrin's car too, as you get a good view of the drivers hands during the burnout (and while that looked good on Franz's car, it works even better on a burnout car), however, TYAFRYA has stickers on the rear windows, and that causes some issues with the suction cups on the Camzilla clamp. As you will notice in the video, there's still some wind noise or vibration issues, but they seem to be getting a bit better.


The final clip for this blog post, is a time lapse video that I shot with the ReplayXD 1080 and Camzilla rig at the Perth Motorplex's December 2011 round of the Australian Top Fuel Championship. I mounted the camera to the glass inside race control, and set the ReplayXD to shoot 1 shot every 3 seconds. The camera managed to fill it's 4 gigabyte card in around 2.5 hours, and I resized, cropped and compiled the results into the video above.