So many positive and negative memories come flooding forward reading all these stories. I’ve way too many fucked up ones I’m never sharing. I have learnt the really hard way it’s better to regret something you have done then something you haven’t done.
It’s taken me 90 mins to write this, fighting back tears.
One of the more light hearted ones. 1998ish, got the opportunity to do a dozen laps around Philip island race track in a VH Commodore Cup car, without a cams license, on a Mazda club day. So long ago now I forget the owners name, he had rented the holiday house next to my families at the island, and I asked to tag along to offer assistance, I had previously helped a high school mates dad go group n historic racing so had half a clue. Dude was raw dogging the event on his own, had recently separated from the wife.
Intention was me driving so the cars owner could check out some niggling noises he was wanting to check out at the end of the day when pretty much every other car had blown up, used up all its tires/brakes, been black flagged for being louder then the space shuttle, etc. I’d been to a few of these club days, the Jaguar day was the most spectacular, two-three hours in, no jags left running, was basically the jag club subsidising cheap track days for others. Jag guys had passion in spades, the old v12 two door XJS coup Walkinshaw Bathurst 1000 car had like 6 dudes all fighting to have a go like kids at kindergarten in the sand pit.
I manage to go under 2 minutes in the VH, which was within 1 second of the fastest time posted by a VH commodore cup car at the time at the Island. Think the VK Cup cars at the time we’re in the 1:58s. On the day Cameron McConville was there, super friendly dude to chat to. So humble for a young dude only a few years older then me. I sure didn’t even know the definition of humble back then. Fuck he was fast. First time in a 993 RS CS and he’s going sub 1:51 times on his first time out in the car and everyone’s got raised eye brows and pulling stop watches out. (The track rules were/are club days were not timed events)
I failed to follow through with an invite to a sanctioned test day. Fucking bone head. JFC. Commodore Cup was one of the unofficial feeder series at the time.
Sometime soon I’m going to go lawn mower racing to put this regret to bed, a mate has a Greenfield with my name on it .