New Australian member....

[bobjeffreson]

I think I went about the the wrong way. I managed to post before I read about this section....lol.
My name is Bob Jeffreson and I live in Sydney Australia. I'm 58 and make hand made jewellery. I ran my own business for 27 years then in 2006 decided I need to step back and enjoy life a bit more. I now am employed and have a very easy life.
I've been attending the speedway since the early 1960s. Fell in love with it the first minute I saw a dirt track solo come at me doing 70/80 mph at the Sydney Showground. How good is this I thought as a young impressionable lad! And then the show continued on to be even better, when the midgets rolled out. I still go and watch the sprintcars and the midgets in Sydney at Parramatta City Raceway most weekends in the summer. When the bikes are around I check them out, however that's rare these days.
For the last 26 years I've raced Radio Controlled dirt track speedway. From 1983 until 1998 I raced 1/10 scale sprintcars, then in 1998 I found 1/4 scale sprintcars and have been involved with them ever since.
That's a little bit of my story.

[rapid30]

Bob,
Once again welcome to ARM, I love reading all of the stories from around the racing circles, you just give us another prosective that we may not have seen before.
Thanks and keep them coming from down under.
Bruce "rapid 30" Rhoades

[Olen McGuire]

From either down under or up over, racecar spelled backwards is still racecar.You get a big welcome from me Bob. You've got a lot of great pics, so keep 'em coming.~Olen :racing:

[bobjeffreson]

Olen,
Thanks for the welcome.
Ah....Racecar..a palindrome....love them..my name is one and this is one of the best one ever, by Napolean Bonaparte while exciled on the island of Elba........ " able was I ere I saw elba "
I'm not clever enough to come up with one like that, so I'll stick with BOB!
And I'll try an find some more interesting pics!

[indybigjohn]

A big welcome to the new guy from Oz. They speak racing there, too.

[Jerry Lee]

Welcome Bob! I'm digging that cool lil' Sprinter you have in your avatar. Looks like you've got a cool little track in the background there too. If you get a chance, check out our 'Backyard Track' under the Chit Chat forum. Not as big as the one you probably run, but fun stuff as well.

Here's an odd question though, I've seen a few Australian car races on video, and the cars were racing around the oval in the opposite direction as we're used to here. But they don't seem to be running that way at the Sydney track you featured. Any insight on why some run different directions?

[webby]

Bob, your posts have been such an awesome addition to our site!! We can't thank you enough for sharing them. The cool thing is most of your stuff are things that I have never seen before which makes it so exciting to read your entries.

[bobjeffreson]

Jerry,
Mate, we run exactly the same way as you guys...anticlockwise...not sure what videos you saw that cars were running in the opposite direction. There is one class of car in southern Australia...super rods... that run the other way, but that's about it.
That RC 1/4 scale sprintcar is a whole lot of fun. Been racing them for 12 years. To see more of our 1/4 scale clubgo to......
http://www.luddenhamquarterscalespeedway.com/

[Jerry Lee]

These Australian races I saw looked like Mini-Stocks (little Fiats, VW's, etc.) on a big dirt track. I have it on a "Spectacular Wrecks" video somewhere, but there is a whole section of these races on there where they were running clockwise. I'll have to dig that out to see if they tell which track it was. Funny, after watching that I always assumed that this was just the way they ran them 'down under'. Like the water flowing in the other direction or something.:)

[lakeside #29]

Welcome here. I'm glad you found this site. The photos you have posted are great. Please keep them coming our way. It's an incredible to be able to read racing history on an international level. Thank you.

[bobjeffreson]

Jerry,
These are the cars you were talking about. Called Super Rods and they are a division based in Southern Australia.And yes they run the wrong way!
They are basically a 350 Chev sprintcar with a small car body stuck over the chassis. They can get up and go and get amazingly sideways... like wingless sprints I suppose.

YouTube- Final Super Rod Cup Warrnambool 28.02.09

[Olen McGuire]

Hey Bob, Jerry and I were talking about those clockwise races. I was told that in England most tracks race that way because the driver sits in the right hand side of the car. It would make sense to me that you would want to be on the inside of the track while driving, so right hand drive cars would race clockwise. You probably are more familiar with that than I am and I'm wondering if that's the reason? ~Olen :racing:

[bobjeffreson]

Olen,
Not so down under my friend. We drive on the other side of the road to you ......same as England. Yet speedway races are conducted, as I said, the same way you guys race.That means the driver of any sort of road car converted to speedway racing is right up against the fence. Single seat racecars have no right or left side ... they're up against the fence all the time, so nobody down here cares where the steering wheel is situated.....:racing: