1999 Celtic Team Challenge Mondello Park

The grid forms with Sean Jones at the front for Wales

The Welsh team took a narrow win in the 1999 Celtic Team Challenge handicap race which was held at Mondello on Easter Monday. The 12 Welsh drivers faced strong opposition from 2 Irish Teams and with over 30 cars on the track the action was fast & furious as the Welsh cars fought to overcome the advantage the handicapper had given the slower Irish cars. Sean Jones and Nigel Bowen featured strongly in the early stages, but with the race featuring a novel pit stop at half distance, it was Alvin Powell who was making good progress in the later stages and he set a new outright saloon car record on the 7th lap with a time of 1 min 27.74 sec.; 70.98 mph. However Alvin was blackflagged for passing a car under a yellow flag, and it was left to the Darrian trio of Terry Brown, Gareth Davies and Graham Cole who finished as the highest Welsh runners. However despite setting their fastest lap on the last lap they were unable to catch the leading Irish drivers. However with Sean Jones, Clive Hayes, Nigel James, Martin Davies & Mike Shaw all finishing well inside the top 20 the handicapper declared the Welsh team the winners by 9 points. (The margin could have been bigger but Granville ran out of petrol and Peter Dark could not get his non turbo car to the line. Afterwards the drivers were enthusiastic about the new Mondello track layout and the new format of the race with pitstops a new feature, and all expressed a desire to do it again next year.

Gareth, Graham & Terry - leading Welsh drivers

Pitstop action - Alvin Powell does his change over

Pitstop action - Eamon Cassisdy does his change over but Clive Hayes overtakes

Terry Brown gets ready to celebrate!