Mac Park Race Report

The three of us from the Brandon Racing Team, along with Chas Hern from Chas Hern Racing made the long trip from Wagga to Mt Gambier for the third round of the MRRDA at Mac Park over the weekend.

It was a tight fit getting the three bikes into the trailer, but somehow we managed it. Chas got us lost on the way over and added an hour and a half to the trip, it’s the last time we let him play with the GPS. Rain, wind, we had it all, and we were happy to finally make it to the house we had rented for the weekend.

Chas hadn’t raced at Mac Park for 9 years, and Brandon had never seen the track prior to driving in the gate on Saturday morning. We managed to set up the pit with fingers that threatened to break off as they were frozen nearly. One minute it was overcast, next it was raining, and that was how the weather was all day Saturday. Chas was too lazy to swap tyres and elected to ride all weekend on slicks regardless of whether it was raining or fine, the guy is nuts. Luckily Brandon has two bike, one set up wet, one set up dry, so we could easily swap bikes prior to heading out on the track.

Qualifying for Chas was great, ending up in P2 behind Steve Tozer on the modified bike. Chas was riding his future bride, Gens stock 400, and was down on horse power to Tozer. Brando managed 5th place in the combined 2 stroke class (80cc-70cc bikes), but a little off the time set by Zac Zanesco on the other 70cc bike

Chas had one race Saturday afternoon, and managed a 2nd place behind Tozer.

Saturday night saw everyone trying to get Hayden Demamiels bikes going. Two bikes, two different problems, one doing a big end and one doing a gearbox, we tried making one good bike from two broken ones. We need to apologies to the motel that owns the house (name withheld to prevent legal action) for splitting the cases on two engines in the lounge room, yep lounge room. However we could not manage to get a bike going for Hayden, and he had to make an early trip home Sunday morning.

Sunday was again cold and wet early, but quickly dried up to give us a track worthy of racing on. Chas managed to hold out a fast finishing Tozer in his first race of the day. He went on to finished the 3rd race in 2nd position, and the 4th race in 3rd, after deciding to back off after a heavy downpour came over half way through the final race. He obviously decide it was better to finish 3rd than to crash Gen’s bike and suffer the consequences when he got home. After the 4 races Chas managed 2nd outright in the 400 class, and 1st outright in the 400 stock class. Considering the bike hasn’t seen a dyno in a while the result was great for him.

Brando fought hard all day, but could not set the same lap times as Zac on the #99 bike. Zac spent all day harassing the boys on the 80cc bikes and finished the round 2nd outright with quite a few 80cc bikes behind him. Brando mixed it all day with Michael Lockhart and Brad Shaw on the 80cc bikes, but lost out down the back straight due to the horse power difference, despite the hard work and time put in by Rick Heffernan racing on the dyno prior to the event.

All in all the weekend was great, both riders and all the bikes coming home in one piece. We would like to thank Chas for helping Brando all weekend with race lines and offering advice on how to go faster. Chas managed to go within 0.2 of the lap record, and Brando managed to go within 1.5 of the new lap record for the 70cc bikes (set by Zac on the weekend)

Of course none of this could be possible without the help of all our sponsors, without them we could not make it to the track each time

Our next outing is at Winton for round 2 of the Victorian Titles. We invite you all to come down and watch the juniors turn laps at Brando’s favorite track.