Good morning everyone!

While there is a lot going on over the next couple of months, there are only two things I want to draw your attention to this month, and they are both very important in different ways.

Lotus Elite Diamond Anniversary Celebrations

Brian Caldersmith has been sweating blood to pull together the Lotus Elite Diamond Anniversary celebrations on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th August. If you still haven’t extracted a digit, you need to do so very quickly or risk missing out completely.

Full details of how to contact Brian and what you need to do are inside Chunky’s Chatter, but in essence there is a dinner that will be held at the Alpha Hotel at Sydney Motorsport Park on Saturday night. To date, nearly 100 attendees have have confirmed!

Following that is the CMC Shannons Day, which will be held on Sunday at Sydney Motorsport Park. There, we will be joined by (to date) more than 60 cars, including 26 Elites, several Sevens, a couple of Elevens, and a whole Smartie tube of Elises, Exiges and Evoras. So please come and join us, bring a picnic and make a day of it!

What you need to do:

If you want to come to dinner, transfer funds ($65 per head) to CLA’s account (BSB633000, ac 144279056).

If you own an Elite, get in touch with Brian for your entry ticket. If you are bringing any other Lotus, Evan Jones has your ticket (evanj@optusnet.com.au)

Mike Basquil’s retirement

As you have hopefully read previously, Mike is retiring from his role as CLA Motorsport Secretary, particularly for the CSCA Supersprints.

Unless we can find a small group of individuals who are willing to pick up the role collectively (we recognise that asking one person is not going to work out) there is the very real possibility that the CSCA series could collapse through a lack of planning and organisation. This will impact a lot of us negatively!

I would ask you please to think through the consequences of this, and if it matters enough to you to put up your hand to form the Motorsport Committee that will pick up this important role from Mike.

Mike is of course willing to continue to support and help the Motorsport Committee as it establishes itself, and to provide guidance on the key planning and communication elements. However, he is NOT willing to continue to run this himself, and frankly, after 15 years of involvement, it is simply not fair for us to continue to lean so heavily on him.

This will be a key agenda item for the AGM in September, but I would ask you to contact myself or Mike before then if you are willing to be part of this Committee approach to managing one of our favourite past-times.

Right, with that off my chest, I hope I will see lots of you at The BIG Lotus Weekend, or at the Kings School All British Day (tickets also through Evan, and we need some marshalls too please), or perhaps at the AGM on Wednesday September 20th.

And in the meantime, keep safe, upright and on the black stuff,
Ashton Roskill.