North Island Series Round 2 Tokoroa

**Shorty_925** · 4th April 2011, 07:50

Originally Posted by NSR143

Its only a week away... so whos coming? Camping from friday night.

Probably run the same format.. Tokoroa Cup on Saturday after practice. Sunday practice followed by 10, 20 and 30 lap races for the North Island Series.

Assistants will be required to help run the event if anyones available.

What time is sign-on & practice start on Saturday?

**Dutchee** · 4th April 2011, 18:08

Originally Posted by ac3_snow

anyone from hamilton going?

You wanting something picked up/dropped off?

**grantnz** · 4th April 2011, 18:37

Originally Posted by grantnz

I'm in, start time Saturday will depend on wether we get there Friday or Sat.

Anyone know what time to be there Saturday? ( at the latest, like when we might be going out for race 1)

I assume Sunday will start once the Panadol has kicked in and the breakfast has been consumed...

**NSR143** · 4th April 2011, 20:31

Originally Posted by grantnz

Anyone know what time to be there Saturday? ( at the latest, like when we might be going out for race 1)

I assume Sunday will start once the Panadol has kicked in and the breakfast has been consumed...

Track opens about noon on Saturday, Track opens about 10 on Sunday.

**grantnz** · 6th April 2011, 19:47

Originally Posted by NSR143

Track opens about noon on Saturday, Track opens about 10 on Sunday.

Thanks for that,will head over Sat morning.

**Henk** · 6th April 2011, 21:46

Instructions on how to find the track are here

http://www.kartsportwaikato.co.nz/about/

In case anybody hasn't been able to work it out themselves.

**ac3_snow** · 7th April 2011, 15:44

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**Captian soup** · 7th April 2011, 23:34

**Shorty_925** · 10th April 2011, 19:14

What an amazing track. Will upload photos and clip onto youtube during the week.

**Damien_Toman** · 10th April 2011, 21:13

Originally Posted by Shorty_925

What an amazing track. Will upload photos and clip onto youtube during the week.

Yes, awesome bucket track

. I'll have racing photos on flickr in the coming week. Thanks to Stephen B and any other organisers - just perfect. The weather was great, the track is fantastic, there were very few crashes and no injuries! How good is that?

Would be great to have races at Tokoroa more often

.

Regards

Damien

**Captian soup** · 11th April 2011, 08:37

super track, bloody brilliant weekend! thanks to mr bennit and everyone there...and to henk for the comprehensive wine tasting. cant wait for the photos.

**grantnz** · 11th April 2011, 10:25

Fantastic track, great weekend, good bunch of people. Would have liked to have the done the Port on a Corner, but the body said NO!
Hope we can race there again soon...
Thanks to Steve for organising this. Sterling effort on Saturday when you probably should have had you feet up.

**Henk** · 11th April 2011, 13:10

F4 NI series round two Tokoroa

Saturday

After the drive down to Tokoroa with the standard stops for lunch and grocery shopping we followed the instructions off the Kartsport Waikato website and promptly got lost in the last 500 meters, heading down the gravel road on the right we came across first, John Steers who told us we had it wrong and then Rick on the way back out. Course corrected we rolled into the paddock to be met by the majority of the usual suspects who had got to the track before us.
Tents set up, van unloaded we headed off for a walk of the track, 750 meters all up and interesting to say the least, the last turn hairpin has some surface changes that follow the corner which saw at least one bike come to grief later in the day and the blind over crest left hander onto the new part of the circuit looked challenging, it did have an enormous tower for the flag point that gave probably the best view of the track since you could see the whole circuit. Down at the bottom of the circuit was a double apex left at the crest of a rise that didn’t seem like anything special but was to become my favorite part of the track as the weekend progressed. Up the hill and another blind left at the top looked dodgy since walking up the hill you couldn’t see the corner until you were nearly on it. This didn’t turn out to be any sort of issue on a bike for some reason.
Waiting for sign on to start and the day to kick off we sat back and watched the display put on by the local model aircraft club, some of the stunt flying we saw from helicopters over the weekend defied belief and the model jet planes were astounding, by the end of the weekend the displays were still good to watch but the noise got a bit annoying but I guess they felt the same about us.
Practice was spent learning the track and finding some of the bumps, the surface changes in the hairpin were unnerving and for some reason I was getting front end chatter coming out of the corner at the bottom of the hill, only on some laps and I never did figure out what was unsettling things.
There were a few worried faces in the pits after the first couple of sessions with people looking at their tires and trying to figure out where they had gone so far wrong with pressures before figuring out that things weren’t falling to bits but we had all picked up between two and three mm of kart track rubber, the free retread service lasted into Sunday morning when we had dragged it all off the track surface to the degree you could see the cleaner sections of track.
Racing got underway after a brief discussion on the merits of drawing lots for the results and settling back on the grass with a beer instead. A few minor crashes with no real damage resulted as we learnt the lines to take and where the tricky parts of the circuit really were. Brian S on the borrowed AMCC FXR cleared off and was immediately thrown out of the B grade and into A along with B grade Tim. FXRs seemed to eating plugs like badly tuned two strokes for some reason and Will Ford had a few teething problems with his bike that were pretty much sorted out by the end of the day.
The Tokoroa cup was won by Gavin V followed by Tim, Rick and Grant from HB in about that order (I think), after the 20 lap race I was dreading the thought of the 30 lapper to come on Sunday.
Dinner was taken care of by heading into the local noodle bar with a stop for a couple of battery lanterns from the warehouse for mood lighting and the evenings festivities kicked off with dinner, wine and cigars followed by the now traditional track walk (thanks to Malcom Nabbs for the stunning idea at Taumarunui). As well as a stop for port on every corner, lines, shift points and braking markers were discussed in depth and a fair number of us managed to suck some useful information out of the faster guys.
Back in the pits racing was suggested, a stop watch was dug out and a couple of folk headed off for a time trials of the top part of the circuit on roller blades, honors going to Paula and Tracey with a special mention to Damien for making it around with no serious injuries, timing was a bit haphazard so we’ll have to call it a draw. The laps of the track on a small girls bicyle were deemed a bad idea after Craig shot round and the climb back up from the bottom of the track nearly killed him so slow races were suggested instead. The course was about 20 feet long with honors going to Craig at 49 seconds closely followed by Kamil. The only downsides were that somebody managed to destroy the front brake and there were a large number of snaky tire tracks on the virginal concrete to be scrubbed off the next morning.

Sunday dawned nicely overcast which was perfect since the weather Saturday was great for lounging in the sun but a bit warmer than ideal for racing, the format for the day was two practice sessions followed by 10 lap, 20 lap, 30 lap for the A grade and 10, 15, 20 for B. Watching the B grade races was great with Julie C grabbing the holeshot in the first two races and hanging onto top spot for most of the race with a four bike freight train battling for the lead.
After some good battles in the mid pack during the 10 and 20 lap races I was about toast and seriously contemplating packing up and watching the action for the 30 lap race, Michelle told me to harden up and get out there and pull off if I started to collapse at mid distance, during the melee in the first couple of laps Brian S messed up and ran a bit wide at the hairpin and Damien being a true gent waved him through rather than hold him up, this backfired on him a bit as about four other bikes took the opportunity to mug him at the end of the straight.
Steve B held up his hands at what seemed far too early in the race to show that there were ten laps to go, he meant ten down and I was just about on my knees when he did it a second time ten laps later.
I managed to get past B grade Tim at some point and put my head down knowing that there were about four bikes behind all looking for the slightest sign of weakness, on top of that we were slowly making ground on Dene on the Derby. With about eight to go Tim slid past me on the drive up the hill followed by Damien showing me a wheel a couple of laps later, serious head down time and somehow managed to drag myself to the end without losing any more places. The battle at the front was intense with Gavin and Tim in a 30 lap sprint, Grant third and Rick fourth with Brian on the borrowed club bike, after being chucked out of B grade the previous day, coming home in fifth.
All up another great weekend away with huge thanks to the Pacific club, Steve and Paula Bennet for organizing the series and event. Numbers were up on Taumarunui which was good. There is a break now before the next round in Wellington in October followed by Auckland in November and Roys Hill December.
Already looking forward to some good racing and catching up with folk from around the country later in the year.