Team Rally240 is a true team effort and while Driver and Navigator have clear roles and a demarcation line down the centre of the car for Targa events, when we venture onto the racetrack it all gets a bit blurred. We both drive at these events either as a double entry where we share the car for the day or as single entrants when only one drives and the other is pit bitch.

When The Bend opened its doors in 2018 it not only provided a whole new world class motorsport complex for us to play in but also increased the number of events open to us to compete in at a club level. There are now a number of "track days" and Supersprint events run either by the local clubs or the track themselves and while this is of course a good thing it has had a flow on effect of reducing the number of drivers at some events both at The Bend and Mallala. It seems there are now more grid spots at some events than there are willing participants. This might not be great news for clubs and promoters but it does give us more choice and more opportunity to hit the track.

One such opportunity arose in May when the Porsche Club of SA secured a grid spot for the first self-promoted combined race meeting at The Bend. Generally speaking each race meeting is promoted by a local club and they just hire the facilities from the track owner, if they don’t have enough members to cover the costs they might combine with another club and share the day. This has been done for years at Mallala with the Marque Sports Car Club of SA operating basically as an umbrella club for all the smaller car clubs to run under the one banner.

But this is a first. The track owner is promoting their own race meeting (not just a track day) with race events for Victorian Tin Tops and Superkarts on the International Circuit and a regularity event for the Porsche club using the West circuit. To keep the costs low the event is sanctioned by AASA rather than CAMS and race control use the sophisticated lights and CCTV systems to manage the event on minimal staff.

So why are we here in our old Datsun? The Porsche Club had a few spots left on their grid and put the call out to a few friends to join them and we couldn't refuse another chance to take on The Bend. Navigator called shotgun on this one so she suited up while Driver installed new brakes and kicked the tyres in readiness.

Navigator has had one day on the West Circuit before running with the MG Car Club last year so while it has been year the layout is at least familiar and the Porsche boys (yes all blokes this time) can be trusted not to bang doors or dive bomb in corners. If they can keep up.

The West Circuit uses about two thirds of the International Circuit with a short-cut crossover part way around making a 3.2km track of 12 corners and includes the main straight and pit complex. It’s half a km longer than Mallala and quite a bit faster and still very technical seeing the front runners lapping in the high 1m30's and the tail enders in the 1m50's and Navigator sitting right in the middle in the low 1m40's.

The event comprised 4 x 30 minute sessions for the Porsches and the club elected to split this up into separate 15 min sessions to reduce the number of cars on the track and reduce the stress on the road cars competing. This meant less track time for each car but the thinned out field meant most had clear laps for their sessions so it turned out to be a great choice. The event was run as a regularity so each driver had to nominate a target time, Navigator went out in practice and straight away went a little quicker than her best time from a year earlier and said there was still more to come so nominated a time a few seconds quicker again. While she wasn't really concerned about results in the regularity it's important to nominate a time that puts you on the grid amongst similarly paced drivers so you don’t all hold each other up.

The thin field (12 in her group I think) meant plenty of space and she only got held up a couple of times and quickly found a spot in the traffic with clear space front and rear and dutifully dropped her lap times each session until ending up taking over three seconds off her PB in the last run.

After the sad ending to the Elfin just five days earlier at the same venue it was a relief to load the car back on the trailer in one piece as we will be back at The Bend again in just two weeks to tackle the monster 7.7km long GT Circuit with the OpenPitLane team.

For the next event the Navigator is again taking the lead but the format of the day is suitable for double entries so Driver is getting a go too.Stay tuned and pray for a dry day.

Playing with Porsches