The 2013 Welsh Sports & Saloon Car Championship- Pembrey 7th April

Entry & practice

Dave Jones leads the early laps from Keith White

There was a combination of new names and faces and some more familiar friends to make up the 21 car entry, which was good considering there were quite a few notable stalwarts conspicuous by their absence on the track, although there were several floating around in the paddock!

Heading the time sheets on his first appearance in the WSSCC was the Caterham of David Jones. David has been driving in the Castle Combe GTs and the Caterham Graduates and he took pole with a time off 62.926 seconds. In 2^nd place on the grid was John Morris only a few 10ths slower in his Tigra silhouette. David Coe was 3^rd fastest with his immaculate heavy metal Scooby Do ST1. Completing the second row was Keith White and his BMW Z4 silhouette, the first 4 cars covered by not much more than ½ a second!

5th fastest with a time of 67.249 was Rhodri Jenkins with his familiar Honda Civic, but now with a new twist in the form of turbo power! Alongside him, David Lawrence was another driver making his debut, driving a Sylva Riot, which served to remind us that Michael Cond was another driver missing the first round of the 2013 season! Indeed only Rhodri, the 2003 & 2004 WSSCC Champion, was preventing it from being the ‘Race of No Champions’!

Ellis Belton and his RS2000 would have been on row 4 but sadly he had to withdraw with gearbox problems. On his own on the row therefore, was another debutant Paul Flinders in his Gulf livered Toyota MR2. Mellissa Luffarelli was a pleasing 9^th fastest in the moto-Mini with Giles Beck rounding off the top 10.

Mike Edgell’s Mini was 11^th with the Swansea Mets’ Locost of  Pedro Ferreira; yet another debutant, for company. On row 7 David Jermy in a Mk1 and Ken James in another Locost completed the line-up of debutants. Ken from Pembrokeshire, was having his first race. Ken works for WRDA stalwart Clive Hayes who was WSSCC champion in the year 2000. Amongst his other interests, Clive builds MRC sports racers in St David’s and he was on hand to see how Ken was getting on.

On row 8 was Huw Morgan with his new type R Honda Civic, alongside Andy Long and his Sylva Phoenix. Chris Morris was next up in his newly fettled Suzuki Ignis. Chris only just made it after tow car problems, but was set to make the effort worthwhile with 2 good races.

Phil Bend all was 18^th fastest and the last runner to set a competitive time, after Verity drifted wide on lap 4 and did some substantial damage to her black MG ZR! Thankfully she herself was ok apart from a bruise in a sensitive place! Fortunately for her the team went back to base to pick up a spare ZR they happened to have lying around, so she would he back out racing later! Roger Dowden only managed one lap in the Davrian but that was it, with the car parked on the trailer. Glynne Jones never set a time with a mystery misfire on the BMW preventing him from setting a time!

Race 1 – 15 minutes plus 1 lap – Rolling Start

Dave Lawrence has a Riot!

In the gap between practice and the race, Mike Skelton the WSSCC Clerk of the Course, gave  a full briefing at the drivers meeting and emphasised that this is a non-contact championship.

 Verity had to do a few quick laps to get used to the new car, and as the cars left on their warm up lap, watching the action from the bank along with Clive Hayes were Martin Davies and Andy Williams, 3 drivers who have won a total of 7 WSSCC championships between them!

After the pace lap, Dave Jones established himself in the lead initially from Keith White with John Morris 3^rd.  However John muscled his way past Keith at the paddock turn and then began to chase Dave who had an almost 2 second lead at the end of lap 4. Morris cut that to under a second on lap 5, but entering Honda on lap 6 he made a lunge at Dave from a long way back --- Unfortunately there was contact and Dave was out on the spot with a broken rear axle! John got going again after a delay, but Keith had gone past into the lead and although John caught and passed Keith late on, to finish first on the road, the matter didn’t end there. After a report from the marshals’ post at Honda was passed through, John was summoned before the Clerk of the Course and was excluded from the race results under C1.1.5 and he left the circuit soon afterwards! Although it may be scant consolation for Dave, who was understandably upset by the whole incident, hopefully the prompt action by Mike, will show that the organisers are ready and willing to clamp down hard on this type of incident as and when it occurs!

When the dust had settled Dave Coe found himself in 2^nd place, despite having to use a set of tarmac rally tyres after a puncture had ruled out him using the only pair of slicks he had with him! ‘They were alright, but they got very hot then it was like driving on glass and they began to break up and throw bits of rubber into the car!’ David Lawrence was 3^rd  and was the last un-lapped runner and he was mighty pleased, even if it had been a lonely race for him! Rhodri Jenkins was 6^th initially but problems with the engine management system forced him to retire. Glynne Jones was on the rise and got up to 4^th in the early laps but visited the pits and eventually retired late in the race. Mellissa got a good start and got up as high as 4^th when Glynne pulled off, but she was unfortunately side-lined too with a broken half-shaft just 2 laps before the chequered flag! This was a real shame as it would have been a good result, however that was the end of the day for her, as the team hadn’t brought a spare one with them. There was some consolation later when she found she was nominated as the ‘Driver of the Race’ by the Marshals panel!

The demise of Rhodri, Glynne and Mellissa, lifted Mike Edgell who was putting on a lively display to finish 4^th with Paul Flinders 5^th and Andy Long 6^th.  Behind them it was all action with Giles Beck leading Class BT with a bunch comprising David Jermy, Pedro Ferreira, Huw Morgan and Chris Morris on his tail. Chris eventually battled his way through to pass Giles for the Class lead late in race to finish 7^th with Giles 8^th . David Jermy (9^th) won the invitation class from Pedro (10^th). Huw Morgan was 11^th (3^rd in BT) with Phil Bendall 12^th (4^th in BT) Ken James was 13^th on his race debut with Verity 14^th.

Race 2 – 15 minutes plus 1 lap – Rolling Start

Only 14 cars lined up for the start of the 2^nd race, with Dave, Rhodri and Mellissa cars all unfortunately out of action. Potentially this should have given Keith an easy run to the race win, though sadly for him as he was the sole remaining Class D runner there would only ½ points to add to his score. Fellow front row man Dave Coe, had now switched to fast road tyres as they were the only set he had left; and he had other ideas, breezing past Keith on lap 3 to take the lead, which he began to extend slowly but surely! It was a classic encounter with the Subaru storming down the straight and with Keith catching up in the corners! Indeed as they came up on the backmarkers Dave got the smoother run through and it looked like he might be on for a maiden win, until he pulled out onto the inside just before Dibeni on lap 9, as his engine had dropped down to only 3 cylinders, and he stopped to prevent any possible further damage to the engine. This gave the lead back to Keith with Dave Lawrence well back in 2^nd place. Glynne Jones now had the BMW back on song, and he tore through the field to take 3^rd place (and the Driver of the Race Award) from Mike Edgell who was now 4^th, but he had Andy Long and then Paul Flinders for company for most of the race. Chris Morris dominated BT class from the off, eventually overtaking Andy Long to finish 6^th with Andy in 7^th. Giles Beck was classified 8^th, but more of that later.

Pedro Ferriera (9^th) won the battle of the Locost’s from Ken James who was 10^th (can two Locosts be classed as a swarm of Locosts?) Huw Morgan with 11^th with his new Honda Civic, with Phil Bendall 12^th and the plucky Verity Banks last.

As Ken started his 11^thl lap, the race was red flagged after Giles Beck lost it midway between the exit from the paddock turn and Senna, bouncing the BMW off the barriers and finishing with car sideways across the track! Giles himself was alright, and was classified in 8^th place in the final results, which were declared in the time honoured tradition of taking the places as they were at the end of the lap before the red flag!

A check on the points show that David Lawrence and Chris Morris are the joint leaders at this early stage with Keith White 3^rd. 

So a good start to the 2013 season, and with drivers like Andy Williams and a few others getting ready to come back it should build up nicely. Andy explained “I picked up a vibration in the last race, last year, but when we stripped the transmission we couldn’t find anything! However when we stripped the engine we found that a camshaft had snapped! The guy who does the camshafts, machines it from a solid steel billet and unfortunately he was away during March. But now he is back we should get the car back together for the next event!’  That will be good news!

 pics next in progress 

Full results and timings available at www.tsl-timing.com