This Sunday sees the annual running of the Peter Hall 6Hr at Mallala. The Sprite Club, with a significant amount of help from the Clubbies brigade, have a long history of participation, including helping the Victorians to a podium place….

It take many hands to make the teams work and Sean Power needs your help! Please see below:

Great news – the 10 day forecast says Sunday will be 10 to 21 degrees on the day and unlikely to have rain.Fabulous news at the moment. Still can be cold at Mallalla.

We have a home base of Sheds 100/101 where we have always located, next to the canteen. Parking just outside. The shed has power for tools, charging and kettles. You can place stuff there for the day.

As usual, I do not know exactly how many volunteers are turning up on the day. I do know that the young ones who ruled the pit wall (2-3 persons) cannot make it this year. They were invaluable and adaptable.

This year we have 2 teams. I will manage the ‘We’re in it for the Beer’ and Pat Miller is going to manage the other team ‘Red Heifer’.

Drivers, this year you do not have to go out in the warmup  to set a time if you don’t want to. Just give me your time …. AND THEN STICK TO IT – winning is not about posting your PB or the fastest time, its about which team can stick to their laptimes for the whole race! Don’t give me a time that you are going to struggle to meet. Give me a time that you can peel off lap after lap after lap …. AND THEN STICK TO IT!!!!!

Each team need to just operate safely and not mess up the day by being disqualified by not having a car on track … this means we need the following resources to make it all work:

• 1 person in formup to keep watching for change overs and to transfer the sleeve band from incoming driver to driver in formup
• 2-3 persons on pit wall to provide times and signals to their driver to come in, slow down, go faster, stay out, etc.
• 1/2 persons located on the hill to time and send messages to pit wall re time of their car or any emergency. They also contact others in team if they see their car crashed or disabled or other general black flag situation.
• A volunteer or volunteers to assist MSCA run the event. We are short all sorts of officials and someone from each team has been rostered on to give an hour to MSCA to take up a position – e.g. at pit start area. 
• Team Manager has to get times from Team members and rush them to the tower by 10.00am, plus try and keep an eye on things as they unfold.
• Handy to have someone at the garages to keep an eye on drivers and let them know when ready to get to start up.  Also helps when there are breakdowns with car in garage and not ready to go.

Note the numbers above do not really include extras to give people toilet and meal breaks. Drivers can help out but with 5 per team, they have to be available for their next set of driving, immediately if anything goes wrong as a car has to get out on track.

Last year we did not have enough walkie talkies for all of the groups involved. It was challenging. Phones can’t be easily used like walkie talkies for casual quick updates of timing & emergency issues. So please, if you are a volunteer, find, borrow or pinch a set of walkie talkies so we can communicate. I have two walkie talkies only plus spare batteries.

So this year I am proposing for my team anyway that we do not concentrate on times and timing if we do not have the resources to time and communicate easily. Drivers set a time they are not easily going to beat and focus on being smooth. We let them go, communicating only on the wall to stay out or come in or whatever.

I rove between positions and try to manage emergencies as they arise and try to do the volunteer position plus liaise with the Race Director if things happen

Main thing is to have fun and keep the cars going.

We are in it to have fun, give the drivers lots of track time and come back safely. See you next Sunday from 8.00am onwards