big red racing: Carnage Canyon 2008

Carnage Canyon was held at Landcruiser Mountain Park in sunny Queensland over the weekend of the 4th and 5th of October and is run down a remote Gorge in the upper reaches of the Brisbane River.

Carnage Canyon is an event for drivers and something that has a few features that no other comp has.
I have entered in a lot of different events over the years and picked out a few things i wanted to see changed then implemented them in this event.
1: no rules ... [apart from safety]
2: no track ... go where you please to get from A to B
3: no pre entry ... if you want to race just turn up,[with safety gear, rego and CTP] pay the entry fee and race
4: no penalties ... you can winch or carry boards etc
5: you don't have to have a Navi ... drive by yourself if you want.

This makes the whole event very casual and pressure free as evidenced by the Saturday night around the campfire at the start line.

There are three classes and as power or high speeds are not an issue they are sorted by tyre size.

Class A: up to 35" tyres
Class B: 35" to 37" tyres
Class C: over 37" tyres

All vehicles must be road registered.

The course itself has a huge and consistent variety of natural terrain spread along the 2.6 Kms ... everything from mud, water, hillclimbs, boulders, rocky outcrops, grassy flats, tight trees, sand, gravel, side slopes, deepish water crossings, wet rock slabs, rock gardens, drop offs to sandy bottomed water crossings.

We have one run on Saturday morning then the afternoon off to repair anything needed before another run in the same direction at night so you know where you are going and what to expect ... this is absolutely awesome and most people actually beat their daylight times!

The final is run in the reverse direction on Sunday Morning with a big jump right at the finish line to end on a high

Great fun to drive fast but can be driven slowly in a stocker if you don't mind a bit of damage to sills and bumpers.

A normal trip with a few mates down the canyon normally takes 3 to 4 hours but the best time so far has been 8 minutes 34 seconds in race mode set by Jeff White in 2006

We had a quiet weekend with only three competitors and all in B class.
[35" - 37"tyres]

B3: Ashley Bunney and Angus Allen pushed the 2.8 Hilux very hard all weekend with a 14'4", 12'27", and a final run of 12'25" to bring it in to second place.
they bent a spring hanger and a tie rod on the final run but had no trouble apart from that.
They had a bit of drama getting over the Goolies but drove the gully to get through on the way down and went round the back over the top of the rock in the final with some nice wheel lifting action.

B2: Michael Davis and Grant Walker had a great first ever run down the canyon in the 4.2TD GU with a superb first up time of 9'36" but did a tyre sidewall near the start on the night stage and had to change it dropping their time to 33'50".
Their final run was ruined by another destroyed tyre but they refused to give up and drove the track on three to complete it in 26'15" bringing it into third place.
Amazingly their mag wheel survived the journey with minimal damage but their winch got a good work out to pull the vehicle across the Goolies.

B1: Wil Neilson and Chris Brame in the 5.7 V8 powered GQ did a fantastic 8'57" on his first run but were put off by the lights of a spectator and cruised to a 11'22" on the night stage, they were asked if they wanted to run again but were in the final anyway and so declined.
Their final run on Sunday morning was a race winning 8'49" only 15 seconds short of the best ever time.
Wil has run the course in 2006 and so knew what to expect but Chris had never been down the Canyon at race pace before and was heard to say "nothing" ... its not very often Chris is speechless !!

We may have been well down on numbers due to other competitions run on the previous two weekends and other events during the same weekend but we all had a great time and are already looking forward to next year!

.Shane Gerrish

A few pics taken over the weekend:

The "goolies", a large outcrop of rock and probably the hardest part of the track, i spent friday morning driving the track and clearing the new growth before the race ...