Sandown 360 Regularity

Story: Mark Horton Andrews, Andrew Smith, Andrew Bonwick Photos: Ron Widdison

The 2022 Mobil1 Sandown 360 Regularity Relay was very successfully held on Sunday 3rd April 2022.

The event is a large undertaking for the Club and enjoys the support of the Victorian Motorsport community, including representatives of Porsche Club of Victoria, the Marque Sports Car Association (MSCA), Motorsport Australia, and the Victorian Flag Marshal team. Thanks also to Kristy Roberts (timing), Emergency Response Services, WAP Motorsport, Pizza Party Hire, Code Black Coffee and the team at Sandown Raceway. Why is it called the 360? Well, 360 refers to the minutes of driving time i.e., six hours! The Regularity Relay is not a race with the aim being to achieve lap times as close as possible to the self-nominated time for each driver. The winning team averages closest to this target across all drivers (4–6 per team). This event favours the most consistent drivers, not the fastest.

As in previous years, we arranged with the MSCA to use their Saturday event to provide an hour of practice. This also meant earlier track entry, vehicle scrutiny, and the ability to set up for the event the next day. Inclement weather made itself known at Saturday practice which saw two red flag incidents and two consequent recoveries. The message for Sunday was clear: “Be careful out there!”

The event once again attracted the support of Mobil1 and Managing Director Bruce Morrison of Motoractive joined as part of a team. The Club is fortunate to have such a significant sponsor support– the sponsorship is critical to our ongoing running of the event.

Adam Stafford

Bang on time at 10:30am on Sunday the first car from each of the 26 teams moved onto the Track behind the Safety Car (kindly provided by MSCA and Piloted by President Bruce Astbury – thanks). Each team had the aim of keeping their cars on track for the next six hours – easier said than done!

Despite the weather and largely due to the respect of competitors, by 4:30pm six hours was up without major incident. The officials in the Control Tower counted down the time and another great event was done and dusted. Together with Bruce Morrison, Motorsport legend John Bowe kindly assisted trophy presentation to the placegetters.

Congratulations to the Panorama Mountain Men from New South Wales (Stewart Temesvary, Glenn Thomas, Gustavo Elias and Gregory Unger all in Mazda MX-5s) who took out first place with 173 laps at an average of 18.32 points per lap. On average, they missed their estimate of how long they would take to complete a lap by 1.832 seconds. Porsche Club of Victoria honour was retrieved somewhat with Victoria’s Carrera Kings (David Mallinson, Mark and Thomas Callaghan Michael McLaurie and James Moyle, 19.97) coming in second place.

In third place Triumph Racing (Philip Nicholson, Ed Ferguson, Alister Ondarchie, Robert Splatt, David Kelly, and Michael Kip) performed strongly but were unable to recreate their 2021 winning style.