Thruxton Reports

By all accounts it was a very full grid, with all the regulars plus some local & guest drivers!

Tony Allit gives us his view on the Welsh Championship first visit to Thruxton.It rained...then it rained and then it rained some bloomin more. We went out on wets for qualifing, Jeff took pole!

 It dried out for the race and my god Thruxton is awesome!  Lee and a few cars had a coming together at the last chicane and Jeff broke down? So the race was red flagged and restarted. Then they put us in parc ferme until after the time curfew and we all had to PUSH our cars back to paddock and onto the trailers!

Louise Rhozon says, Richard really enjoyed it. It was a wet qualifying but we managed to get 6th on the grid. After what seemed like a very long wet afternoon, we finally made the grid after about 5.30pm.

After a very long delay on the grid; not sure what caused it but Rich thought there seemed to be a problem between a driver and officials near the back of the grid. (Actually Clive Hayes reported that the organisers has forgotten our race and had started to close down the circuit & had locked the flags away!) The delay caused some very hot sports car engines, but the race started well and Rich made a good start.

Unfortunately, the red flag was shown after Jeff came into contact with a back marker saloon car on the first corner. I definitely think that if Jeff's race hadn't come to an abrupt early finish, he would have won the race by miles, he was flying!

The re-start once again took ages due to some fussing by the Marshalls over someones car and I think Clive was forced to pull off the grid due to an overheating engine. I think maybe the officials and competitors who don't suffer such problems forget how very temperamental some engines can get when subjected to long waits on the grid and in the assembly area. Anyway, after the restart Richard once again got away well and maintained 2nd place behind a local Radical SR3. Because of the long wait before the restart, they only managed to get 4 laps in but Rich felt that given a couple more laps he would definitely have been in with a chance of catching the SR3 and gaining 1st overall.

He was delighted with the result although I would have to say, Thruxton is not really a spectators circuit and there was not a great deal to be seen. Louise Rhozon