The invite from the Subaru Club to the Audi Club to attend there annual track weekend at Phakisa was a gratefully accepted by only three Audi chaps. Chris (A4 3.0Q), Philip (S6), Elna (Porsche 944T) and Andrew (S3) were out to have some fun in the safety of a track environment as well as practice
the skills learned from the Four Rings Academy training that we had received earlier in the year. 25 Subaru's, 2 Porsche's, 1 Skyline, 1 Honda, 3 Lotus 7's were there along with the 3 Audi's on the Saturday.

On Friday, Andrew, the lone S3 driver missed the Scooby convoy and drove slowly down to the circuit, with the local traffic departments in a full 'Frantic Christmas Bonus Collection' frenzy.  The laser jammer was working
overtime with nine traps on the way.  A quiet evening was had by all, with a quick trip to the local Nando's with all the Scooby's, followed by an early night so as to be fresh the next morning.

Saturday morning started with a quick change of tyre pressures to the 3.5 front/3.0 rear bar recommended by Jakes of the Four Rings Academy, then off to the circuit to ensure early and cool track time.  At this time the day trippers (Chris, Philip and Elna) arrived and prepared there cars for the day.  Chris, it must be said, was a paragon of organisation, with multiple cooler boxes of food, non-alcoholic liquid refreshments, chairs and a compressor as powerful as those found at most service stations to ensure the correct pressure.  After a few minutes of compressor envy from Andrew (who has already bought one) and Philip, we were out onto the track. The day was cloudy with temperatures in the mid 20’s.

Due to general laziness on my part I am not giving the times for each of the sessions, but the end times for the day were:

  The times for all cars on Saturday are attached. The times for Sunday were lost due to a corrupt disk! (eventually the Sunday's results were saved and can be seen at the Subaru club’s wed site)

Comments one the times are as follows:

  Philip -    Proved that Torsen works wonders, even on canvas!  More seriously Philip improved his time from the previous year by a fair margin and looked and sounded very nice on the track. His track time was cut short as a result of totally destroying one of his front tyres.

  Chris -    The highlight of the day.  A heavy car with only 94KW at the wheels produced times consistently that were only a few seconds off those the mighty S6, and quicker than many of the WRX's and STI's.  Chris never put a wheel off that track and was always in total control.  Well done Chris.  The time is over 5 seconds better than the last time you were at Phakisa – most people had a 1.5/2 second improvement.

Elna -    Spend most of her day showing Philip and Andrew how to go through corner 1 faster instead of trying to get faster times.  Was consistently
getting faster the whole day.

Andrew -    Was not having a good day.  Perfectly safe at all times, only managed to drop bellow 02:14:00 after a lesson from Chris and a lecture on not getting to excitable at the same time.

The Subaru Advance Driving trainer was getting rave reviews from the Scooby drivers who he had been out with and kindly agreed to drive with Elna, who appreciated to effort, but was really to late in the day to actually improve times. 

After this Chris left for home, Philip changed his 'canvas' tyre, Andrew found an excuse not to do the Gymkhana and had a few beers with Philip and Elna before they left for JHB.  The trip back for Philip was quite eventful, with the Laser Jammer working overtime!

Saturday evening was a calm time, with the comment being passed by the Scooby Club that the 'Audi guy is in the bar again'.  It seems Andrew was keeping up the Audi tradition of ignoring early nights and lots of sleep before the next days driving for more quality bar time.  Ahem. We are getting a bad reputation!

Sunday morning was the time when Andrew 'borrowed' Sean Potter (who races
Subaru's) for a rather more robust lecture on his failings on the fast corners, which resulted in his fastest laps of the weekend by over two seconds and in the qualifying a 02:09.399.  That time included a impromptu test of the Quattro system off road on corner 2 - the car passed that with flying colours and allot of beeping from the rather annoyed ESP system.

Prize giving followed, and then we all went off home.

Chris, Philip, Elna and Andrew all really enjoyed the time on that track and would like to thank the Subaru Club for the invite.  We will be there next year with hopefully better support from the rest of the Audi Club!

For more pictures click HERE

Andrew Stevens