Written By Sarah Dryburgh

Track Day 20th May 2023

Towards the end of May the team returned to the track for a driver selection day following the drive day in January of this year. Departing a chilly Wollongong in the early morning, the team arrived to an even colder Sydney Motorsport Park around 8 am.  

After unpacking and setting up, our 2022 EV ‘Annie’ was ready to take on the track for the day. A track walk along with a discussion of the day’s expectations aimed to set out the tone for the day, although Annie had other ideas. An initial shakedown of a few laps of the skidpad only had a slight hiccup of the nose cone coming loose but nothing too serious. We were then onto the driver selection. 

A total of 9 drivers were to be tested on their skills to help determine the competition drivers for later in the year but after hiccup one, many more followed. The first driver’s laps were completed in a clean run but when the data was to be collected nothing was found; the beacon was flat.  

After a bit of confusion, the beacon was changed, and we were back to business.  

Driver 2 was now up but 2 laps into his run the car stopped mid track. After some more confusion Annie was rolled back to the marshalling area for further investigation. An error code had arisen signalling a communication error in the accumulator. Following clearing the error and taking the accumulator out three times to see the problem, Annie was done for the day, and we had to call it around 12pm.  

Although the misfortunes the day possessed it was still great for the team to go out together and for the new members to see the difficulties a track day holds. We would like to thank our friends at Sydney Motorsport Park and the Australian Racing Drivers’ Club, as well as the University of Wollongong for their continued support of the team.