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Hey all, another year at the Springnats has been and gone already! I had a ball, huge 3 day weekend as always! Where do I even start? In the big build-up to Shep this year, the club managed to get 34 cars entered, which in itself was a great effort. I believe 32 of these cars actually made it to Shep, with only 2 left at home… one broken, one saving money! It was the usual lead-up, in the weeks before, and even days and hours before, cars were being finished, registered, and assembled! This year Gordz thought it would be fun to play lego with his engine, making it to Shep with the Torana in the back of the transporter where a team then got to work to assemble the engine. The first time I walked past and saw an intake manifold and heads being worked on, I thought “Surely not….” But yep it was in a million pieces. True Gordz fashion….. Friday morning/afternoon – Scrutineering time – WHOA!!! No queues this year! We were in and out within 5 minutes flat, the organisers really did a great job on improving that, it just wasn’t the same without the 2 hour or longer wait! What an ace start to the weekend…. From there, everyone checked into the hotels and caravan parks. It was scorching hot, high 30’s already. Throughout the afternoon, everyone eventually made their way out to DECA where all the festivities were set to take place. We got organised on our usual club site around the Eastside marquee. Then it was the usual routine of removing bonnets, exhaust systems, fitting appropriate tyres (stockies for some, stickies for others), fitting shotgun scoops (!!), and battling the extreme dust. A huge thank you to Max and Meguiar’s for sponsoring us for the weekend by providing some great Meguiar’s products. Speed detailer is a beautiful thing indeed! Anyway, before too long the Friday night fun began with the Shakedown (Motorkhana). A pleasant surprise this year (in all events) was the introduction of electronic timing boards, how good was that! Being able to see what time you posted, and to keep track of all the other cars too was fantastic. It’s always good to compare… So Friday night went off without any problems… everyone seemed to be having a red hot go out there under lights, and how cool were the results: Mackie posted the fastest time of the weekend taking out 1st place for the blokes, with Cliffy backing him up coming a close 2nd! One and two, well done guys. The ladies were not to be outdone, with Karen posting the fastest time out of all the girls, grabbing herself the 1st place trophy!! We finished up for the night sometime after 10pm, exhausted, but we still had two days of events to go…. Saturday – another stinking hot day, even hotter again. But that didn’t stop anyone from driving their wheels off and testing their cars limits. Gav and DC did a ripper of a job Saturday morning getting the site organised and the Eastside display cranking. Various props were set up – a mock-up Dyno cell, Drive-In movie night, Drag Racing, Motorkhana, and of course the Show n Shine worked itself out! When all the cars were on site and being displayed, it was quite impressive, but in true Eastside style… most of the time the site was pretty bare as everyone was far too busy tearing things up out on the skidpan…. First up for Saturday was the infamous “Spear A Spud”. Always entertaining with lots of cars having a go. Simon in particular had a real good crack this year, winning the Male class! Another congratulations! This was followed with most people’s favourite event, the Go-to-whoa. Everyone was getting plenty of skidpan time this year, lots of good times were being posted as everyone aimed to qualify for the finals. A big highlight this year was having Mackie competing in the Drifting demonstrations throughout the weekend in his trusty EB XR6 Drift machine. Way to go mate! That boy is living life sideways…. Saturday arvo was also Burnout comp eliminations over at the burnout pad, while the skidpan activities never stopped… running once again till late at night, and finishing off with fireworks. Only one more day to go…. Sunday started for a couple of us with a lap through town in the Springnats Supercruise. Not a huge turnout, but we still had fun cruising through town, Stew’s HK and my LX, Eastside flags hanging out the windows! Arriving at DECA, it was soon discovered that a massive number of members had qualified for the finals… so everyone got to work cleaning their cars yet again… damn that dust!!!! Go-To-Whoa finals were huge this year. Rather than heads-up eliminations racing, this year it was run so that every entrant got two or three runs. From these, the 3 fastest males and the 3 fastest females then fought it out for the podium positions! Us blokes lucked out, but how awesome were our girls! Not only winning it, but taking home 2nd place as well! Well done Nikki and Karen. There were a lot of very proud people watching on. Once the finals were over and done with, we started relaxing. A few grudge races continued throughout the afternoon, and at one stage I believe we had 4 or 5 cars broken down, but luckily all were easily fixed. Well done to Jason who smashed his harmonic balancer clean off and hit the barrier dividing the skidpan with it, pretty cool effort I reckon! Overall, no big problems or major breakages that I heard of, so it was a very successful weekend for all involved. To finish off the weekend late on Sunday arvo…. The drifters went out for one last demo… and you’d never read about it (well you are now), but Cliffy and Mackie threw some stockies onto SHHMIK and with Mackie behind the wheel, we all got treated to a big thumping V8 drifting around every last millimetre of the skidpan with the other drift cars. I know it was one of the main highlights of the whole weekend for most people. PS. SHHMIK is still for sale if anyone wants a circuit car AND a drift car…. It was then time for the trophy presentations. And good to see so many people hung around for it too…. Listed below are the club’s results for 2006: a huge haul that we never imagined! Who would ever have guessed we’d take away 16 trophies! A special congratulations to Kaz with “TOYRX” – this was her first event with the car, and her efforts were rewarded accordingly… taking home 2 driving event trophies, and 5 judged trophies, for a total of 7 individual trophies! Well done! A huge congrats to everyone else who took home trophies too, and thank you to everybody who entered cars, or came to spectate and support the club. I would also like to thank this year’s Springnats sub-committee – Simon, Bec, DC, Gav (you are the MAN!), Dee, Cath, and Dave J. Hope I didn’t forget anyone. OFFICIAL RESULTS
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