Volkswagen Driving Experience

Took part in the “Volkswagen Driving Evolution” course yesterday at Phillip Island. Good fun, especially because it was so wet.

Recommend doing it.

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Back to the track

Headed to an RCA organised track day at SIC last weekend to grab some shots. A seriously busy morning, tonnes of cars on track at the same time and quite a few red flags due to incidents.

More photos up on my Flickr.

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Trackday at SIC

Spent a day out at the Sepang International Circuit on Saturday, checking out the local trackday scene. Unfortunately I didn’t bring along my long lens so only had a max of 55mm to play with, not the best for taking shots at a circuit with such massive F1-compatible runoffs.

Ended up walking right out to the end of what they call “The Mall”, between the main back-to-back grandstands along the two long straights, could not get over the size of this place. The trackday was being held on what is the full 5.5km F1 layout so that action was pretty spread out. That said, from a vantage in the main stand I could see the majority of the track, I just couldn’t reach it with my camera.

Lots of Lotii in attendance, along with a bunch of well sorted JDM Hondas, Subarus, a few (LOUD) Altezzas and a Veilside-kitted RX7.

The day itself seemed well organised, I only saw a couple of incidents - one Civic failed to secure its bonnet properly with obvious results, whilst another car (I think it was a Proton of some sort) stopped out on the circuit and brought out the red flags during one session. Overtaking seemed to be allowed anywhere and most, if not all, cars had passengers each time they went out. I can see how - with those two massive straights - the layout would suit big-power cars and can imagine that the big stops at the end of them, combined with the heat, would make this circuit pretty tough on brakes.

Perhaps next time I’ll get out on the track myself.

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A lap of the creek

Here’s a video of me driving a lap of Eastern Creek Raceway in the MINI. This was one of my faster laps of the day and just happened to be my final one for the session - look out for the chequered flag just after I cross the finish line.

Being so late in the day I was short shifting in a few places and was definitely running out of brakes, so there’s still plenty of room for improvement - both in my driving and car setup. The steptronic (auto) gearbox works a treat around the circuit, punching out lightning fast changes and never once resisting my requested downshifts when called upon to do so.

To shoot this video I was using my new camera rig between the rear seat headrests, the camera itself was a Panasonic DMC-FT1 / DMC-TS1 that records in AVCHD Lite format at 720p resolution. I converted the raw video to DV using VisualHub (RIP), with a basic edit in Final Cut Express.

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BMW Sprints at Eastern Creek

Some photos from Round 3 of the 2009 BMW Drivers Club NSW Supersprint at Eastern Creek that took place yesterday. Very impressed with the way these events (and the BMW club) are organised. Yesterday’s round was also a round of the EPCC, so there were a quite few different makes out on the track to keep things interesting.

I had much better luck taking photos than on previous attempts, though still not 100% impressed with the sharpness of my long lens, will definitely like to invest in some better gear (lenses) in the not too distant future. Played around in Aperture much more than I normally would when putting these shots together, amazing how an average shot can be resurrected with a little bit of of a tweak here and there. Hope you like them.

Please drop me an email if you’d like copies of any of these shots.

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