As a first-time participant on the last weekend of October in 1999, I found out - a lot of fun due in equal parts to being able to drive quickly, if badly, and sharing the experience with other first timers and `old-hand' Sprite Car Club of Australia (SCCA) Spriters. It was so good I did it again at the 2001 event!

What follows is an account of my first experience at the regular October weekend organised by the Triumph Sports Owners Club (TSOA) at

Wakefield Park motor racing circuit near Goulburn, two and a half hours south of Sydney, New South Wales.

Together with the TSOA, the Austin Healey, Lotus, Jaguar, MG and Morgan clubs join with the Sprite Car Club in running an event each in the supersprint series each year. At a supersprint you race against the clock, not against other drivers. Road cars are fine with minimal preparation needed.

In fact, the beauty of these events is that you drive your road car to the event, pump up the tyres, take out loose items from the interior and boot and then it's on to the racetrack.

The most difficult issue was deciding to do the event with a road car that has been taken back to bare metal and fully restored. As it was used fairly regularly, I reasoned that running around Wakefield (which has plenty of room for off-road excursions) was still in the tradition of `using it like it was meant to be' and what's more, it was legal.

Note the photo in the supersprint link. This concern didn't worry Bert Langford in his fastidiously and totally restored Concours-winning bugeye who, as an experienced competitor, has run it at most of the circuits, walls or not!

The main tasks were to fit a fire extinguisher, making up some numbers and a battery triangle and locating a short piece of rope to act as a temporary bonnet strap.

I found some fridge magnet material for the numbers and threaded the rope through the holes in the panel that braces the bonnet's leading edge tying each end to the bumper mounting brackets.

The final piece of equipment was a helmet - the cheapest at the local motorbike shop with the correct standards sticker on it.

Getting the entry in was smooth and I was able get the number that had to go with the car - 68 (it is a 1968 MG Midget).

Travelling down to Goulburn in time to get a garage and for scrutineering on the Saturday morning meant getting up at 4.30am for the 6am meet with fellow Spriters at the Crossroads near Liverpool, at the beginning of the expressway south from Sydney to Goulburn.

`Jeez, what am I doing this for,' and other ruder utterances were mumbled as the alarm went off but then the thought of an early morning drive, top down on a sunny day came to the fore and answered the question.

And so the day started. But after meeting up with the other eight Spriters, many of us being novices at supersprints, the sun gradually turned to drizzle as we cruised (buzzed, more accurately) down the expressway.

The rain got heavier but we kept going, top down, in true sports car nut fashion. By the time we got to Goulburn I needed windscreen wipers on the inside of my spectacles because the rain had became quite heavy.

Saturday is reserved for untimed training runs after scrutineering, where friendly club officials confirm your car's safety and class eligibility. The tyre pressures were boosted to about 32psi front and 34psi rear and the spare wheel, tools and other contents of the boot stacked in the covered garage where we parked our vehicles in between runs.

With intermittent showers making sure that both the track and top down drivers (me) were wet - the latter especially while queued up for driver training runs, Saturday was a careful exploratory run around the track. On both days, driver training on Saturday and timed runs on Sunday, cars and drivers with similar times/levels of experience ran at the same time to reduce speed differentials and risks.

This meant that most of the SCCA novices circulated together which certainly added to the fun with other Sprites on the track as the same time and back in the garage, drivers exchanging experiences.

After lunch on Saturday the track started to dry and Andrew Small, experienced speed event competitor and later to become SCCA President, offered to guide me around the track for a few laps. What a difference that made!

Using the proper lines suggested by Andrew, things started to feel a lot better especially on the top part of the track where I felt I had started to get the hang of it. By clipping the apex of the three preceding corners, it was possible to go flat out in an almost straight line to the sharp right hander before the main straight. Fantastic! You little beauty!

Don't ask me what speeds I was doing - didn't have time to look! Seeing the action on Andrew's video at the December SCCA meeting, it looked painfully slow but it sure didn't feel it.

Unfortunately, despite Andrew's best efforts to point out the best lines for the remaining corners, I didn't get it consistently right especially the kink at end of the main straight. I was told by Andrew and others that it could be taken at speed and not to hit the brakes. Either I left the braking too late and ran too wide into the subsequent right hander or I backed off the power too early.

Sunday was sprint day with three sessions, in company with other SCCA first-timers, to practice what we had been shown on the Saturday. A spin during the first session while the track was still damp from early morning drizzle completed the full racetrack experience.

Waiting for the call to the dummy grid, ABP 102 is parked next to the Mk 3 Sprite of Simone who was also doing her first speed event. The blurry shot is ABP 102 negotiating the 'fish hook', a left hander that was smoothed out in 2001. This change is clear from the dark coloured tarmac in the aerial shot of the circuit in this link.

The grins on the faces of the first-timers as they returned from each session suggested that the balance between frightening ourselves and satisfaction in getting at least some of the corners `right' was in favour of the latter.

In summary and without even mentioning the overnight stay at the `Loaded Dog', the SCCA's traditional overnight pub at Tarago 10 minutes from the circuit, it was a marvellous introduction to supersprinting. And it could not have happened without the selfless approach of the SCCA stalwarts, the seasoned speed event competitors, who found time to show us first-timers how to do it. It struck me that this is a real attribute of the SCCA and is only fully experienced at a competition event.

What next? Well, I want to do this again but will probably stick to Wakefield Park in the short term to minimise the likelihood of damage to the car. The other circuits used for superspints are equipped with walls so further exploration of the car's and its driver's limits is required. Taking a car that is normally driven on the road around a track where you get an opportunity to `have a go' and to better your own time is what I like.

Addendum…ABP 102 attended the 2001 event which was just as much fun and the times improved by 3 seconds. Unfortunately most of this was due to the racetrack design having been altered slightly to smooth out a couple of the corners (see the caption to the first photo above) . Lesson - participate more often in speed events as practice is essential and do a driver training course.

This is an edited version of an article which first appeared in the March 2000 edition of 'Sprite Torque'.