John McM

9:40 start.

BB passed scrutineering. All drivers documented. Now to driver briefing.

peterC2S

What car or team number are you running under RM?

Edit: don't worry - driver names now showing up.

Macca

boys are mid pack (10/18). Competition is hotting up, looks like track has dried out. Williams in 4th putting in a 1.22.579 best lap in a Sentra SSS. Quick! Seems like the lead 6-12 cars putting in best laps of 1.22-1.25. Smith in an Integra driving the car in 11th spot is putting in 1.23.xx fairly consistently so closing the gap and will be the RSG teams biggest immediate threat....ok looks like that just happened. RSG in 11. Mendes driving and good odds for a hot lap (just put in a best so far in his drive of 1.28.363 being chased by Smith). Its a long race and wont just come down to lap times...

O2GO

There are more posts on our FB group Macca. The driver names aren't accurate. Still going well with BB2 out with a blown brake hose

peterC2S

Geez the final 20 laps are shaping up to be a cracker. 263 laps in and less than 3 secs between the top 2 - not sure who's driving but could be Mark Mallard? Going to need all the skills to hold off.

JMac running nice and consistent - keep it running!!!

CS Mende

In the failing light of he day, McMillan brought us over the line!

CS Mende

Team Photo

Macca

Well done boys!! Steve R would be mighty impressed with the state of those cars after 7hrs running!

Maxem

Nice work lads. I've just had my morning walk in Noordeloos, Netherlands and came back to the good news. So where did we finish?
I see BB2 was a DNF but did BB make it through?
No other drama's?
What was the attrition rate for the feild?
Fastest lap?

CS Mende

BB2 lost full brakes but Mark's skill kept it out of the wall on turn 2. BB to the rescue again! Grinch did extra sessions & all drivers got good seat time.

Best lap was 1:26.5x, but I had good luck with a drier track. It cleaned up late morning and didn't spit again til 15 mins before the end. We were very lucky.

Attached, out mad max grinch with demister.

John McM

More pics from the Dunlop 800.

John McM

Thoughts from the 800.

In recent fields we have run top of the mid pack or bottom of the fast pack. Realistically, we weren't going to podium as the fast cars are well prepared (won't breakdown) and the field had a fair number of those cars. That said, I think we ran well. We completed a total of 257 laps, an average of 35 laps for each of the seven drivers.

BB continues to amaze. She just ran and ran and ran. No drama. At one stage, Mark ran out of brakes in BB2 at turn 2 when a crimped junction on the hose to the brake caliper popped out giving 'a spurter'. He managed to bring it home and as the Grinch was away being refuelled I had to take BB out. She still feels the most benign handling of the trio. That was the only incident of the day. No brake fade to speak of and our pads lasted. Thank goodness we put new pads in as you need options when a car has to run more than expected.

We have a list of improvements to make, but right now I think it's rest time. A great day shared with a great group of guys. That seven A type personalities can work as a cohesive team with relatively little structure still amazes me. Bring on the new season.

ChrisB_NZ

The reliability and drivability of those Integras is amazing, great cars. John, you did a fantastic job ensuring they were well prepped, thanks for that, I know a lot of hours and hard work went in to achieving that result. The first point of enjoyment in an enduro is finishing, trust me, not finishing sucks, so the concept of 3 cars in a team meaning you aren't out if one breaks was a great move by the 2kCup organisers, a brilliant event.

We did it very differently to most of the other teams with 9 driver changes which was in the true spirit of the event, but obviously took out a fair bit of time. I have no doubt if we had focused on winning as a higher priority, which I'm glad we didn't, we could have finished a long way further up. At the end of the first stint we were 6th, so we had the cars to do it. Then we progressively went back as we had more and more driver changes with the associated time in the pits, including a great knack of pitting just before safety cars.

Heaps of fun and learning!

Ndewar

Thoroughly enjoyable event with team spirit and excitement the whole day being the key. Some funny moments and team work that resulted in a wonderful experience. A big thanks to john and the rest of the team who are so much more mechanically minded than me and offered so much to the preparation of the cars. The Hondas were fantastic and bb amazing. Times for all drivers very similar but some of the cars out there pulled away from us effortlessly. There is a secret in there somewhere.
Thanks to the team for a wonderful days racing.

O2GO

A bit of a personal journey for me with the Dunlop800....

The 800 was my first race outside of several PCNZ dual sprints over the last 3 years. The last of these I did ended in a costly crash in the wet back in August 14 so I was pretty anxious about cocking it up for the team by coming off the track in the wet or dropping a bunch of places from being too slow. The team could see this and a big thanks to Mark H especially for talking me through relaxing and not worrying about pace. When I went out it was wet but drying well in the racing lines and Chris (our lead on tyre pressures for the conditions) who had just come in was concerned about my pressures being set too high for the wet. After 21 laps I was going slower and they brought me in to drop the pressures and sent another car out. I was happy that I'd done enough and my times were very slow (1:35+). This is where the team dynamics kicked in and they were determined to send me out for another 15 laps with correct pressures and didn't let me give up. That second run was brilliant. It was now fully dry, tyre pressures were correct and I was doing a few 1:29.5s in BB and got my confidence back.

So a big thanks to all of the team for that. It was a good call for getting me "back on the horse" and especially Mark for coaching me on not worrying and just enjoying it.

The teamwork was fabulous and it was a lot of fun doing it as a big team. Chris B is right. We could have been more competitive with less drivers as we gave up a lot of time with our pitting for driver swaps but it was in the spirit of finishing and sharing.

I loved it and are now thinking more seriously of getting into the 2kcup.

Thanks guys :-)