After helping Phil from Trailblazers RV for the past 3 years at Leisurefest, I again jumped at the opportunity to drive our rig around Sandown.
Marg and I left Broadwater Tourist Park on Sunday 25th September and had overnighters at Moree, Peak Hill and Shepparton, arriving home about lunchtime on Wednesday 28th Sep. This gave us about 7 days to unpack and clean out the inside and outside of both the mighty Navara and the fiver. It is great doing the show because Marg and I are forced to clean our rig and now it is all ready for our next sojourn.

The Leisurefest goes from Thursday to Sunday, but the Tow Ed sponsored Test Drive around the Sandown Motor Racing circuit is open from Friday to Sunday inclusive and between 11am to 4pm. On Thursdays the circuit is booked by Murcutt's Advanced Driving courses.

Friday
I left home about 7:30am and drove all of 10kms to Sandown. Upon arriving, I managed to get the security guard to get a key to unlock the gates to allow me into the pit area. I parked in the Pit area about 8am, within minutes, the rest of the team arrived (John, Julie, Gerrard and Trish all from Tow_Ed - Education for those that tow, as well as Dick from Trulux and Graham from Winnebago.

Saturday
I left home about 7:45am and arrived about 8:10am, as the traffic was very light. I got the security guard to let me into the pit lane area. I hitched up and moved our rig to the front of the queue, about 20 minutes later the Tow-ed team arrived. We got ourselves organised and waited for the opening time. The time went quickly as it alwaays does when you are busy, sometimes there were quiet times, by on the whole, it was another great day. During a quieter time John made the below movie, which I starred in. It goes for 9 minutes and there is a tall idiot appearing at the end of the video. Guess who that could be?

Sunday
I arrived about 8:30am and sat in my fiver watching Bathurst on TV, until close to 11am, when the public flooded in, well actually, a couple of patrons walked in and wanted to test drive caravans, Bugger!! Russell, one of the leisurefest staff managed to find a TV aerial for the Tv that we had in the Pits, so we managed to watch bathurst even though it was a bit 'frosty', but we could see what was happening. During the quiet periods, I would go and drive a couple of laps by myself. I love that. When a customer arrives wanting me, Trish would call me on UHF and I would call into the pits and pick them up. I would then take them for usually 3 laps including going through the end of the front straight and through the chicane at a quicker speed then normal to highlight how the 5th Wheeler design allows the van to just sit behind the tug and tracks beautifully. One of the reasons that we bought a 5th Wheeler. If Phil or Chris from Trailblazer sent them to me, I would go into 'Super Salesman' mode and I would pull up at the back of the pits and show them all the nooks and cranies of our rig. This always took a long time, but it was great fun.
About 4pm, I packed up and drove into the Public area behind the pits and then went over to chat to Phil, Chris and Mark at Trailblazers. I left the show about 4:45pm and got home about 5:15pm and parked the fiver where it goes on our front lawn.

I probably took about 30 groups over the weekend. It was another great weekend, even though the weather wasn't the best, but hey, it's Melbourne.

The format of the my 3 days was:
8:00am - Arrive at track and hitch up my rig, as I drove our tug home each night.
10:30am - Drivers briefing - max speed on track was 90kph, in pit area 30kph with hazard lights on etc.
11:00 to 4:00pm - Drive laps of the track, taking various customers with me.
4:30pm - walk over to the Trailblazers Rv stand and inform Phil about my day, tell him what a great salesman I am.
5:00pm - Leave Sandown for home.

I had an absolute ball and drove approx 100 laps of the track in the 3 days.
Thanks to John from Tow-Ed for the videos of our rig in action.

Videos of the weekend.