Yokohama

Sea Lake Malley Rally 2008

(By: Andy Fox)

Sea Lake

Sea Lake is a small, friendly town located about 2 hours on the Melbourne side of Mildura. As the name suggests there is a salt lake, hence the name Sea Lake. The lake supports a Salt Works and is one of the key industries around the town.

The race is run around the lake, each lap is approx. 85kms. The race is 4 laps in duration, which is split by a lunch break.

Unfortunately this year’s event was cancelled due to rain. The issue being the Ambulances and Recovery Vehicles could not access the track. Safety issues considered to cancel was the right decision.

So while we retreat to the local pub for a Parmy and Pot, we can reflect on last year’s race.

Sea Lake Malley Rally 2008 was our first real run at a long course event. To say the least, we were a bit nervous, but excited to see how we compared to the winners in the category at a state level.

The track is a mix of surfaces sand, clay, rock, bulldust and gravel. There is a mix of thin sand and fast sections working into some dirt tracks amongst trees, opening out into some flowing corners that weave their way across the top of the lake. The journey down the back of the track is a mix of 150kmh flowing bends and straights that allow speeds up to 200kmh. The last 15 km’s grabs your attention with a rough flowing section that we attacked at about 170kmh, awesome stuff in a 2.4 ton Patrol.

Prologue

To determine the starting order as to where we qualify is called Prologue… This is held over a 12.7 km loop and is timed. The fastest time starts at the front.

We qualified 1st in our Category 7(Production Class) and we won the ‘Dash for Cash’. During the ‘Dash for Cash’ the rear end didn’t want to grip up and nearly took out a bunch of tyres in a chicane. Luckily, at the last moment we managed to get it all going the right way, a few scratches but no real damage.

We were pretty excited about qualifying as we were 20 100ths slower than a Category 8 (Extreme 4WD). We weigh 2.4 tons and had about 200 hp, this guy weighs 1600 kilos and has an ex. Max Dumsey Sprint Car motor (700hp) in the front of his Patrol Trayback.

The Race

After Prologue we added rebound to the rear shocks to control the bounce in the rear end.

Another thing that was driving me nutty were the Coopers we were running. They caused the vehicle to steer to one side of the track. This makes it really hard to feel the balance of the vehicle in the steering wheel when you are loading the steering to make it go in a straight line, the same as a poor front wheel alignment problem. This issue makes it almost impossible to really know what your front end is doing and indeed what lock you have on when sliding. Further research into this issue, found the hard sidewall belting is set up for the U.S., hence the vehicle wants to run off one side of the road.

We lined up against the Category 8 Production Patrol and went head to head. The first few corners showed us the difference, he had awesome drive and power we had great corner speed.

The first lap was finding our feet, getting a rhythm and exploring the track a bit. Working past a few slower buggies we enjoyed the racing. The conditions were working towards us and the Patrol was working well.

We got caught in a dust cloud and took out a star picket with the bulbar. No harm done…

Overall the first two laps went well. We stopped for a quick snack and serviced the Patrol in readiness for the second section. The race was shortened from 4 laps to 3 because of an issue with an official falling off his bike and breaking his leg pre-race.

The Last Lap

We started next to a Buggy and followed it out to the road jump. We passed it on the section leading past the road jump and as we entered the forest we came up behind a driver in a Category 2 Buggy. Despite our frantic horn blowing, the driver didn’t want to pull over and let us through. So we left the air horns on and followed him point blank through the trees at about 120kmh. At some stages we couldn’t see his rear number plate… cool stuff.

The driver made a mistake and slid onto one of the corners, so we took advantage, passed him and moved forward with the race. We kept our momentum and worked our way through to the finish line.

We won our Class, beating the current Victorian Category 7 champion by 22 minutes and were 7 minutes behind the Category 8 Patrol we started next to.

Overall, we were pretty happy with our result, and with a couple of trophies in the swag we drove the Patrol home.