Phillip Island

VHRR put on a great show here, some 25,000 are thought to have passed through the turnstiles, and certainly the grass banks were well packed. The excellent weather helped of course, I understand that Phillip Island isn't always so blessed.

They run a bewildering 45 races over the two days of racing, giving most categories 4 races, we had one 5 lapper and 3 races of 6 laps; they have a pit return road half way round the circuit, enabling cars to be pulled off after their finish with merely half a lap cooling down, at which point the next race cars are released from the pit lane for their formation lap, extremely efficient. At one point the programme was 30 minutes behind schedule on Sunday, but that's all, which is a simply mighty effort by all involved.

As well as conventional racing, over here they have something called Regularities, which I'd not heard of before, where your performance is judged by how similar your lap times are, against a benchmark, this enables a wide range of cars to compete, with a 1906 GP Darracq, Lago Talbot GP (driven by someone calling himself Hugh Jarse (sic!) then everything/anything through to 70's Corvettes ... This all went a bit wrong when it transpired that some cars where well over 120kph faster than others on the straight, so they ordered everyone to run no quicker than 2:07, at which point some of the quicker cars decided to pack up and go home - this was about the only poorly thought-out issue that I saw all weekend.

Headline cars this year included 3 Maserati 250Fs (pleased to report that the one I'd seen in the pitwall on Thursday suffered merely superficial damage). Obviously the Porsche factory cars were impressive but they weren't actually being raced. Two private Porsche 956/962 were though, and they are always great to see, especially as these tow ran nose-to-tail for many laps of the race I managed to see. For me the highlight was the Gurney Eagle F1, simply the most beautiful race car ever built, to my eyes at any rate.

Great dinner in the Saturday night, with two engaging speakers, John French, well known Aussie tin-top racer, an old boy with a twinkle in his eyes and some good stories. I am sorry that I didn't get to meet Murray Carter, another Aussie legend, still racing modern cars in his eighties - now in his 63rd year of racing apparently he's just building a Corvette, paddle shifts and all - awesome! At the dinner I was sitting next to an ex-pat Brit, Chris Wilson, who now has the ex-Ray Bellm GT40 which he was racing here, and it turns out we have a good mutual friend in common from outside the motorsport scene, small world! Nice to meet you Chris.

I didn't get to see much racing, but the Touring cars looked like the best races, especially the over three litres group, and the Formula Fords, always good to watch, despite quite a wide ranging field from early generations to much later ones.

It was good to meet some of the Formula Junior fraternity, including old acquaintance Kim Shearn, who has lost 60kgs ... Yes really, and now fits into a Lotus 20, which he is bringing to Europe for some events this summer, 4 Formula Juniors are coming over, which is great, as it'll give me the chance to return some hospitality.

Despite the TR5 being a rather humble piece of machinery by comparison with the other cars brought in for the event, the VHRR threw practically the whole "International Competitor" package at me, it is simply fantastic to receive that sort of welcome and hospitality, and I'm hugely grateful.

Fabulous meeting, fabulous track, and super hospitality - if you ever have the chance to come down here and race - DO IT!