Australia Day 2010

This year for Australia Day, k8 and I decided to do something a little different, for us anyway. As long as we've been together we've been spending the day at other people's houses. This year, we spent the day at home, and cooked up a bit of a feast. We actually cooked enough for several more people to eat, but that's ok, it's all good food, and we'll be eating leftovers for a while now.

I cooked the meat, and k8 cooked some garlic potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli cheese and some roasted vegetables including potato, pumpkin and carrots. The meat side of things consisted of a pork roast and a lamb roast, both smoked in a Weber BBQ.

Cooking the meat took about 4 hours, from lighting the coals in the Weber to getting the meat onto the plate, and involved smoking the meat with hickory wood. I have previously used hickory to smoke a turkey and pork combination for Christmas, so I had some idea of how things were going to pan out today. For instance, I knew to keep an eye on things until the meat turned to the desired shade and then to wrap the roasts in aluminium foil to stop the skin from burning while I waited for the rest of the meat to cook.

Of course, a good beer always goes well with a good meal, and today's choice was Beez Neez, a honey flavoured beer brewed by The Matilda Bay Brewery.

Motorvation 24

Motorvation 24 has now been run and won, and since last weekend I've been flat out sorting photos, burning DVD's and uploading to the website. I'm now taking a few minutes to try to put together a few words on the weekend.



This was the first year for a long time that I haven't entered a car, but my club, All Fours and Rotaries Car Club, still entered 6 cars, and took out a whole stack of driving trophies. In past years we've been very successful in the Club Grand Championship, however this year the powers that be decided not to award a trophy to the Champion Club, so we'll never know just how well we performed.



In terms of crowd numbers, from my perspective track side, it certainly appeared that the gate would have suffered as a result of the hotter weather. Both days were well over 40 degrees C, making life difficult for entrants, spectators and staff alike.



If you want to check out who won what, , put together by the Motorplex staff, that will tell you almost everything you could ask about the weekends results.



I'm still working on the galleries for HighOctanePhotos.com, but they shouldn't be too far away now.

ANDRA Pro Series Top Fuel - Round 3

This weekend saw the running of round 3 of the ANDRA Pro Series Australian Top Fuel Championship. Seven cars fronted for this round, with most of the teams electing to leave their transporters parked at the Motorplex after round 2 in December.



Friday nights qualifying session saw good strong passes from all concerned, with Phil Lamattina setting quickest time with a 4.708 second pass, while Bob Shepherd rounded out the field with a 6.290 second first pass, exploding the motor just after half track, leaving a big mess for the track crew and a hole in the track.



All 7 cars were able to make it to the first round of eliminations on Saturday, and the huge crowd at the Motorplex were treated to some of the best Top Fuel racing the venue has ever seen. The first rounds racing saw Darren Morgan defeat Mark Mariani with a 4.834 second pass to a 4.858 second pass. Phil Read ran 4.870 to defeat Allan Dobson with a 5.002. Martin Stamatis made his way to the next round with a 4.809 over Bob Shepherd's 5.481. While Phil Lamattina's top qualifier spot had earned him a solo through to the next round, he certainly didn't take things easy, with a 4.694 second pass, the second quickest lap of the meeting.



The semi-finals saw Read defeat Stamatis 4.708 to 4.967, while Lamattina's 4.709 accounted for Morgan's 5.011. In the final, Read left the line ever so slightly earlier, with a 0.095 reaction time, against Lamattina's 0.120, however by the 1000 foot marker, Lamattina had edged ahead, finishing with a 4.682 to Read's 4.852.