A Dramatic Saturday

The Morning…

Saturday morning Mum and Dad headed off early to Wakefield Park for a motorbike track day. I slept in a bit, but decided to head up myself to grab a few photos and test out the video capture of my camera. I loaded up the car and set off.  This was Dad’s first track day at Wakefield Park (although he’s done many at Eastern Creek before).

It started off very well. By the time I arrived Dad had already finished his first session, but I was there in time to catch up with him before he headed out for his next one. Dad’s goal for the day was to be lapping in under 1:10 – In his first session he had been comfortably lapping at around 1:11 so he was already close…

When he set off for his 2nd session of the day I went down to the outside of turn 2 to grab some ‘safety’ shots – I always like to get a few easy photos in the bag at the start of the day, so that I can spend the rest of the time experimenting more or trying new things, knowing that I’ve at least got some keepers if nothing else works. I knew turn 2 wouldn’t give me the most exciting photos of the day (how true that turned out to be!) but having taken photos from there before I knew that I’d get at least a few decent photos from that part of the track.

Halfway point….

Things were really going well now. In this session Dad had a few laps in the 1:09′s, so he’d already achieved his goal for the day and looked set to go even faster. I’d gotten a couple of photos and some video, and was looking forward to being able to try out some more interesting locations. Whereas Eastern Creek is very strict about where you’re allowed to go as a spectator, Wakefield seems much more relaxed, and even allows you access to the pit-wall.

During the break we grabbed some coffee and refuelled the bike, and briefly chatted about the track, breaking points, cornering lines, etc. I really can’t think of much better to do on a Saturday than sit around at a racetrack to be honest :)

Dad headed out for his next session, and this time Mum and I watched from the pit wall. Standing on the wall for any motor-sport event is really something. It’s a real treat to have bikes or cars whizzing by at 200km/h only a meter in front of you. As for photos, it’s a challenge to say the least.  From a more traditional side-on vantage point the bikes are approaching at an angle, which makes auto-focus tracking a breeze once you get used to panning, as the relative distance between the camera and the subject doesn’t change too drastically. Also because the bike is travelling more or less horizontally through the focus plane it will be in the focus sweet spot for quite some time, especially when using a narrower aperture. However standing on the pit-wall looking down the straight, the bikes are approaching very quickly and the subject-to-camera distance is decreasing so quickly that the autofocus system has trouble keeping up.

In the end I opted to pre-focus at a particular point on the track (using one of the white grid markers on the track as a reference point), and then pre-emptivly click the shutter to try to time it so that the bike would be in the focus plane at just the right instant. The issue is that the ideal in-focus area is only a few meters or so deep, and this time the bike is moving straight through it at about 170km/h. That’s almost 50m/s, which means the bike will only be in proper focus for less than 1/10th of a second! Still, with a bit of practice on other bikes as they went past I started to get the hang of when to click the shutter, and was able to get semi-consistent results. Video was much easier to capture here though, as I didn’t need to pan or anything – just set the focus point and hold the camera steady – some of my favourite footage from the day was from this point.

Towards the end…

After this we had some lunch, more coffee, and watched some of the other bikes on the track. I headed to turn 1 for Dad’s next session, up on the top of the ‘grandstand’. Dad was now lapping really consistently, so it was obvious he was feeling pretty comfortable on the track.

For his next time out I decided to try out turn 10, the last corner on the track. This is a relatively slow corner, and there’s spectator access really close to the track so I thought it might lead to some exciting photos. Things were going well, and lap after lap I was getting knee-down photos of Dad and some cool video as well.

It was just after this last photo was taken that it happened. On the exit of turn 10, coming onto the main straight, dad started to wind on the power, as he did every lap. Only this time he must have done it too fast, or too soon, because something went wrong…

Dad was taken to Goulburn Base Hospital by ambulance and given a full workup of tests. He was released at 11:30 that night, and at the time it appeared that all he had was a sprained ankle and a sore back. However the next day he had a sudden onset of dizziness and almost fainted, so he went to hospital again (this time in Canberra), and they discovered a small hole in one lung and bruising around his heart, plus a few small blood-clots in his leg.

Thankfully though the clots have cleared up and his ankle and back are much better. He’s recovering very quickly actually, which is a testament to his overall fitness. Unfortunately the bike sustained a fair bit of damage, but it’s all repairable, so I’m sure he’ll be back on the track in no time…

Big thanks to everyone that was involved in his treatment at the hospital (especially the nurses at Goulburn Base), the ambulance officers, and everyone that helped at the track.