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Martin Davies leads - but it was Keith White who continued his run of success

The entry was much the same as it was for the Anniversary Cup Race on Saturday except that we were without Vaughan Fletcher, Glynne Jones, Ian Fraser, Abdullah Al Thani, and Fabio Luffarelli, who tried to solve his gearbox problems with an engine change overnight, but to no avail.  However we were joined by championship regulars Peter Hills, Susanne Jones, Dave Scaramanga, Nick Rocke, Chris Morris, Colin Dunn & Paul Flinders.

More of that later. Clive Hayes had taken over SVG BMW as the MX5 was out! All in all there were 28 cars going out for the start of practice at 11.40, but surprisingly the circuit seemed to cope with those numbers and everyone seemed to be able to set a decent time, and no reports of any problems associated with the size of the entry reached my ears!

Practice was a repeat of Saturdays’ event, as far as Keith White was concerned, having set a pole time early on of 61.653seconds on his first flying lap! Martin Davies was 2^nd fastest, and also dipped down to 61.827, set on his 3^rd lap! Keith & Martin were the only 2 drivers to set times in the 61 second bracket! Dave Krayem and Ben Scrivens made it an all Ginetta G50 second row, or he would have done, but Bens car started to shed some bodywork, late on in the session, which several cars couldn’t help but run over, except for poor Chris Morris whose Ignis collected a large piece full on and meant there was a bit TLC needed to repair the damage.   On row 3, Damian Longatano was 5^th ahead of Andy Williams.

Ken James was 6^th in the high performance Lo-cost Loco Hornet, and he had the Class AS  Mini of Peter Hill alongside. Underneath the Mini body-shell Peters’ car is pretty Hi-tech and he has added a new gearbox since his last outing and he certainly seemed to be pedalling it well! Sam Summerhayes was next up, with his Saxo, with the new and old style Minis of Mark Harries and Endaf Owens making it 4 cars all within ¾ of seconds of each other. Sadly a 4 way fight for the bragging rights was not to be, as the engine in Endafs’ car had gone sour and he was out of the race!

Dave Scaramanga was 12^th with his VW Vento, which is old enough now to run in one of the other Historic races which were on the same card. However he came back to the pits with an ‘orrible sound coming from the rear of the car. A rear hub had gone down, and there was a time when it looked like Dave would be out, until a replacement hub was found!

Daryl Radford was 13^th fastest and the fastest Class AT car, ahead of Roger Dowden (Class AS). At 14^th fastest, Rogers’ rear drive Davrian and Ken James Loco Hornet in 7^th, were the bookends between a gaggle of 6 front wheel drive cars! 

The rest of the grid lined up with in 15th  Josh Wright Renault Megane, 16^th Chris Morris Suzuki Ignis Sport, 17^th Tyrone Luffarelli Peugeot 106 GTi,

18^th Giles Beck  BMW 318si, 19^th Nicholas Rocke  Fiesta Mark 4,  20^th Susanne Jones Lotus Elise, 21^st Willem Verhaak Mazda MX5 22^nd Colin Dunn Renault Clio, 23^rd Huw Morgan Honda Civic Type R, 24^th Craig Wright BMW Compact, 25^th Andrew Williams MG ZR, 26^th John Norrington Alfa Romeo 145, 27^th Clive Hayes BMW 1800 and finally 28^th Paul Flinders whose Toyata MR2  trailed a cloud of steam all day, but Paul stuck to it and by tightening all the hose clips, one by one, made it for more & more laps by the end of the day. ‘I need a good test session and it will be alright!

After our practice session, it clouded over and we had some heavy drizzle which looked like it was going to set in for the day, but it then stopped and by the time our race came the track was dry!

During the day lots of old racers like Larry Phillips, Nigel Bowen and Ken & Jackie Rattenbury popped in to see us. Ken said he was really missing racing with us and now Jake was soon to finish his University course, who knows we may see him out with us again!  Mike Edgell and his wife were also there as spectators. Mike has been under the weather recently but he hopes a change of medication will see him back out with us next year.

Denis Carter, who was the chief of the BARC 25 years ago when they became the lease-holders of the circuit, was also present. Denis & Phil Davies did a lot to foster the Championship in the early years, and he was most pleased to see that Welsh Championship had the biggest grid on the entire programme!   

The race – 15 mins + 1 lap – Rolling Start

Kid Rocke leads from Giles & Tryone

As the pace car brought the cars around on their Green Flag lap there were now 26 starters (there had been some hopes of a 32 car grid, but 26 cars certainly gave us a Wow factor). One thing or another, the Blue Flag marshals were in for a busy time, but I suspect that’s just what they wanted! Ernie Preece has been in hospital getting a 50,000 mile service, and was recovering at home but I suspect he wished he was here too! As the lights changed it was Martin Davies who got the best start, and he lead out of Debeni with Keith White in hot pursuit.  Martin was really going for it, and he and Keith, drew away from Dave K, who was in an increasingly distant 3^rd place. The lead for Martin lasted 6 laps of glory, but as they came up to lap a mega bunch of mid-grid runners lead by Roger Dowden and consisting of Daryl Radford, Giles Beck, Nick Rocke, Chris Morris, Josh Wright, and Tyrone Luffarelli whose Peugeot was the first in line. Keith could see that Martin could easily use this to his advantage, so he dived up inside of Martin at Brooklands and took advantage of the traffic himself! As the race moved to its later stages Keith had a 5 second lead over Martin who seemed settled in 2^nd place, well clear of Dave and his Ginetta.

Behind Dave it was all action with several cars in close order, Damian Longatano was 4^th ahead of Andy Williams and the impressive Peter Hills and his Mini. Ken James was a few seconds back but ahead of Dave Scaramanga, Sam Summerhayes and Mark Harris. Paul Flinders had departed back to the paddock after only 2 laps for some more spanner work, and after 4 laps we lost Damian too as he pulled off with a suspected melted piston! That was a shame as he was looking good for his first points of the season! Ken James got the better of Peter Hills who then got involved in a big dice with Sam Summerhayes as Dave S dropped away to finish 8^th

In the group consisting of Roger Dowden, Daryl Radford, Giles Beck, Nick Rocke, Chris Morris, Josh Wright, and Tyrone Luffarelli; Chris Morris found a way through, eventually closing up to the back of Mark Harris, but was 2^nd in Class AS some way behind Peter Hills who won the class. In 11^th place, Nick Rocke had worked his way up to finish in 11th place and was the Class AT winner but had Class-mates Giles Beck and Tyrone breathing down his neck! The rest of the Class BT points were in a line behind Josh Wright (14^th) & Roger Dowden (15^th). Colin Dunn was 16^th but had Huw Morgan keeping him honest. New boy Wileem Verhaak as 18^th and Susanne Jones was the last BT runner in 20^th place. In 19^th was a disappointed Craig Wright, who found that switching to slicks wasn’t the answer. He wasn’t happy with the performance of his new BWW compact and said ’I’ll be putting it up for sale on Monday!’  Sometimes people say things they don’t mean as a smokescreen to hide their real intensions. Not so with Craig, as he did indeed put the BMW up ‘For Sale’ first thing on Monday!  Guest driver John Norrington (Alfa 145) was 21^st ahead of Andrew Williams’ MG, with Clive Hayes, the last finisher in a BMW 1800.  Those who known Clive (and I do) will know that he was totally let down by the machinery. He did indicate that he might race with us again, but in a something else. Now if he were to put a roll cage into that nice Jaguar he’s got ….

So Keith swept on towards another race win and he had Martin Davies keeping a watching brief about 5 seconds back. That is until coming up to the final stages when Martin car seemed to drop back! Martin held a 10 second lead over Dave Krayem but that shrunk to nothing and then Dave was through into second place albeit 14 seconds behind Keith White. Clearly something was wrong and Martin finished in 4^th place some 16 seconds behind having given away a 10 second lead. At the end of the race Martin confirmed that his engine had started to cut out and that slowed his progress!

 Keith was happy with his race. ‘That was a lot of fun!’

Prizegiving

N.B All items on this site and in these reports are designed to convey the fun and excitement of motor sport, and should be viewed in this context only

Times & Results http://www.tsl-timing.com/file/?f=BARC/2015/153321wss.pdf