The WA Sporting Car Club had a successful return to racing after a three month break with more than 120 entries taking part in the club’s first state round for the year at Wanneroo Raceway.
Featuring the usual array of categories, all drivers participating in the one-day event were compliant with the Motorsport Australia Return to Race guidelines, which allowed the club to run the first state level event in country since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.
Once Sunday morning’s practice and qualifying sessions for the six competing categories were wrapped up, the real action got underway as a number of drivers showed no signs of rustiness behind the wheel.
Headlining the event was the 21-entry Time Attack Challenge with the category’s two biggest classes enjoying entertaining battles for the spoils.
Tony Menna fended off challenges from Michael Moylan and Russell Cooley to comfortably win the Historic Touring Cars over 3000cc class, whereas Justin Chaffey just managed to edge out Chris Ainscough in the Modern Cars class.
After his win in the category’s third session over Ainscough, Chaffey was thrilled to just be back into the car.
“Feels good to be back racing, it’s been a while since we raced but it has been worth the wait,” Chaffey said.
"We have three race cars and have spent a lot of the off time doing some work on them including a new engine in one of them."
Robert Landsmeer was one of the performers of the day as he secured a clean sweep of race wins in the "Federal Tyres" Excel Cup over Cooper Smart who was second in each race. The battle for third saw Ryan McNess just beat Cameron Atkins and Jake Passaris.
In Historic Touring Cars, Grant Johnson steered his LJ Torana GTR XU-1 to both the outright category and Group Nc Over 3001cc class victories, while Garry Edwards won the Group Nc Under 3001cc class, Dan Forster the Groups Na/Nb Under 3000cc class and Laurie Lapsley took honours in the Groups Na/Nb Over 3000cc class.
A number of categories had round victors fall just one race short of clean sweeps, including Formula Vee 1600’s David Caisley and 1200’s Franz Esterbauer, Marc Watkins in Saloon cars and Formula Ford winner Craig Jorgensen.
Following on from the successful return, WASCC Chair of the Competition Peter Dyball was just happy to see racing back and was proud with the attitudes of all of the competitors.
"We've had a great day, the weather has turned it on for us and we've had plenty of exuberant driving,” Dyball said.
“It feels like it’s the first race day back for the year rather than just after a couple of months break. Some great racing and great driving with our officials doing a fantastic job.
"We've followed all the Motorsport Australia Return to Race guidelines and restrictions that is included the number of people on our facility including one driver, one pit crew and unfortunately no spectators, but we hope to have them back as soon as we can. We've also ensured hand sanitiser and social distancing is in place which is being monitored by a dedicated team today."
The club’s next race meeting at Wanneroo Raceway will be announced in the coming weeks.