Getting Started

The East Coast Classic recently held in NSW, promised much and delivered little. From the moment prior to the lunch re-start when a spectators vehicle nearly ran into my car due to lack of supervision in the car park, it didnt improve.

As usual for these events it was divided into tour and competition entrants. The tour group consisted of around twenty-one cars and the competition forty-one. Not a difficult number to organize you would think.  But we found out otherwise. We were promised 225kms of competitive sections in the promotional blurb, the road book totalled 194 and we finished up completing 140kms over four days. The number of stages planned was twenty-eight, we completed only eighteen and seven of these were very minor hill climbs and race-tracks. So in effect we did eleven road stages.

We were warned at the briefing that all roads were shire roads and told they were rough, ill maintained and dangerous and to be very safety conscious. This is as it should be, the safety warning that is, but with the exception of the roads around Penrith, where the rally started and into the Blue Mountains, they certainly were third class roads. The explanation given was that to get permission to use other roads as in government roads and other authorities was too difficult.

Day One

The rally started with a few laps around Oran Park Raceway, which was a bit of fun, and then everyone got lost as the road book was in the format of numbering every control both in and out and until one realised this, a little difficult to decipher. So at the next check point there was great confusion as tour entrants were turning up after competition people and so on.

Day one was really a transport from Penrith to Bathurst, with only thirty kilometers of competitive planned. It didnt take long for us to realize we were not going to get what we paid for as we only completed twenty-five of those thirty kilometers on the way to the finish at the Bathurst Light car Club on Mt Panorama.

The Great Track is interesting on the first visit. It is awesome driving around it at normal speeds (it is open through the day for anyone to drive around which I was surprised to find) and appreciating just how tight and twisty it actually is. My admiration for those past and present Bathurst heroes has grown enormously. We didnt get to drive at competition speeds on the whole track, but over the next couple of days we completed a couple of short hill climbs up each side. This was interesting, and would have been a bonus if the rest of the stages had been up to scratch.

Day two dawned bright and hopeful only to fall in a big heap with five sections cancelled out of a proposed nine. It became pretty obvious that lack of personnel was the problem. The Adelaide classic employ (on a voluntary basis) around eight hundred people to run four days of competition, I would estimate we might have seen fifty if that. The same faces kept on cropping up. No explanation or apology was given that night at dinner. The way they carried on one would have thought everything was normal. Keep the PR flowing and everyone might believe everything was OK.

There were a lot of first timers at this rally, so they probably thought this was normal.

Without boring you with too much detail, on day three, we completed five out of eight sections, and day four we did two very short sections in the morning and then drove to Eastern Creek race-track, over one hundred and forty-five kilometers of transport, only to hang around from 12.30 to 4.15pm before we got on the track, waiting to get four laps of half the track and another four laps of another third of the track. Really exiting stuff, I must say. We found out later at the presentation dinner when results became available that our time for this last section was recorded incorrectly, so even results were a non event.

We drove from Eastern Creek into the heart of Sydney so that the PR stuff (read bullshit) could continue with a big finale on Pyrmont Bridge. We should have driven straight there from Penrith and spent the weekend in Sydney.

Just a comment on the shire roads we were promised. I live in the country so I think Im a good judge of a lousy road. These roads were atrocious, they were rough and dangerously bumpy, too straight so maximum speeds were excessive; over 200kph for some cars, on a road we shouldnt have been doing more than 80kph. Caution boards were not in place, there were huge bumps not cautioned even in the road book, SOS points were not marked. In general it was not a good experience compared to what can be done.

Socially we had a great time. We spent so much time hanging around waiting for things to happen that we met and got to know a great bunch of people. As Victorians we felt very welcome and learnt a lot about what direction development of my type of vehicle, Alfa 105, is going in Sydney. The dinners each evening were very good, and the few beers at the Bathurst Light Car Club at the finish for the first three days were great.

They really tried to do it properly socially and I think succeeded, but were let down by bad event management. In view of the number of excellent tarmac rallies on around the country and overseas, one would think some expertise could have rubbed off, or if in real trouble with entries or personnel or whatever, the option may have been to postpone or call the event off.

Will I return next year? I probably will not be invited after this article or the letter I wrote to the organisers, but I would like to go, it has potential, but I will certainly require some guarantees before doing so.

The event was won by Peter Landon in a most magnificent Lotus Elan. It was driven superbly, considering the roads. If you want any more results check their web page.