Sprints Baby

Down here in Aus, the time attack scene is relatively small compared to the likes of Japan, Europe and the USA. Despite this, it is slowly growing, and one of the most popular events here in Queensland is the Sprint days held once or twice a month. We only get the use of two tracks, that being Queensland Raceway and Lakeside, with our third, Morgan Park, being a good two to three hour trip out of Brisbane. The event we attended today was the Wednesday Afternoon Sprints or WAS. Sprint days are open to the general public to watch and, if you hold the correct license, to have a go around the track in your car.
With the weather preparing to deter are efforts of watching some of the fastest cars around, we decided to head out anyway. Upon arrival, God decided he wanted to play and let the sun shine on what was a fantastic day for racing. Sprints bring out all types of cars ranging from inexperienced drivers in underpowered FWD's all the way up fully race prepped, stripped, caged and sponsored race cars out for testing, with a few luxury baller rides thrown into the mix. Queensland Raceway or QR is a very basic track with a few different layouts to change things up, however the bonus is that almost everything can be seen from the pit wall, which makes it great to watch. Now let's talk about what you want to hear about...cars.



One car that seems to be out in a utterly dominating fashion at the Sprint days is of course the Porsche's, with this day being no different having a 996 GT3 running straight through twin pipes and rolling on Michelin Porsche Cup Car slicks, a 997 GT3RS, which was setting the quickest times of the day and proving that Porsche knows what they are doing. But our pick was definitely the 996 GT2, which was hitting some phenomenal numbers down the main and back straights and leaving absolutely everything for dead, when it go to them. Proving there is no replacement for...forced induction?


Some more likely sprint heroes showed up as well including a multitude of WRX's, Evolutions and Sti's. There was also two Lotus Exiges on the day with one being an absolutely stunning Pearl Red Exige S and the other being a privately backed Exige racer, the Exige S was a fantastic car to look at but was a bit weak on the ears going round the track, with the Celica 2ZZ being a little less exciting than we expected...oh well was probably a hell of a lot of fun to drive.

Every sprint day there are some oddballs that turn out, and WAS was really no different with the likes of two RX8, one supporting some lovely PMU Brakes but with horrendus chrome wheels. A couple of drift cars came out to show that they can drive in straight lines (which didn't really happen) with the purple 180 playing host to the worlds largest and most unnecessary screamer pipe. Also two John Cooper Works Mini Cooper S's showed up posting some surprisingly quick lap times and the weirdest entrant being a purple Datsun 1200 Ute carrying a SR20DET from a Silvia and actually holding it's own against its competitors. There were many other cars, some worth mentioning which we didn't get pics of such as a Red Evo 9 with carbon fibre everywhere and some porn as hell Advans under its guards, but also some cars that I am glad did not waste my memory card space.