| Summer Autocross - July 3rd & 4th |
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The first weekend of July saw the running of the NDMC 2 day Autocross at Sugworthy, the event was again a round of the Competition Car Insurance Southern Counties Autocross Championship. The weather was fairly kind to us with just enough rain to keep the dust down and allow us to run a 4 abreast format over the two days. The overnight rain made the early Sunday runs somewhat slippery, but the track held up well and the times were a match for the Saturday runs by the end of the day.
The event was dominated by Colin Anderson in the glorious sounding Alfa Romeo V6 engined Special, Colin taking FTD on both days. Allan Tapscott took Class A1 honours on both days in a standard Nova GTE with Jason Byrom putting in a cracking drive in the Yugo to finish only 1.1 seconds behind Allan on Saturday to collect 2nd in Class, his best result to date and followed up with a 4th in Class on Sunday. Gordon Rogers joined us for the Sunday and borrowed Allan's Nova to get 2nd in Class, not quite being able to match Allan's pace. Jack Lamburn was also flying the NDMC banner although the little Fiesta was struggling against the more powerful cars in the class and a slipping clutch slowed him down on the Saturday runs. Paul Bishop from Mary Tavy rolled his 205 on the final run on Sunday, fortunately with no injury other than hurt pride, the 205 was looking a bit second hand though. Hopefully this will not put him off Autocrossing and he will be back next year.
High Bickington's Ken Hartfield won
Class A2 on both days, Christian Thorne collected 2nd in Class on Saturday,
despite only getting one run in after overheating problems in the Astra.
The Sunday event was not so good for Christian and he retired after
the first timed run, although he did get out to play in Dave Baskerville's
Sunbeam, though his times from these runs could not count towards the
event.
Ben Dixey was struggling to find traction on the early runs in the BMW
and when the track started to get quicker, the BMW's engined cried enough
and he slowed down over the finish line with the big ends making a bit
more noise than the should. On the Sunday Ben used his 205 and picked
up 4th in Class, a result which could have been better had the induction
pipe not split and reduced the power.
In the amalgamated Class B/C we only had Fiesta of Nick Webber to represent the Club, a hard class with reigning Southern Counties Autocross Champion Mark Tredwell in his 205 and Andy Hoare from Bournemouth in the 1275GT Mini. Nick managed 5th in Class on both days and won the Best NDMC award for his efforts.
Class D was the battle of the NDMC Sunbeams of Dave & Paul Baskerville and Dudley Elliott. Paul showed Dave how it was done on Saturday finishing nearly 13 seconds clear, with Dudley trailing behind. On Sunday Dave returned to his old form and it was Paul struggling to get to grips with the early slippery conditions. Dudley had cured his gremlins from Saturday and his Sunbeam was running much sweeter on his way to 2nd in Class, knocking about 14 seconds off his best Saturday time.
Mike Bray was our sole NDMC competitor in the amalgamated Class E/F picking up a 2nd in Class on Saturday and 4th in Class on Sunday in his Audi 80.
A BIG thank you to Andy, Trevor and
all the NDMC members who came out to support the event both as competitors
and marshals, it was a toe in the water with running our first 2 day
event and it went fairly well. The entry list was disappointing with
only 30 over the two days, but bearing in mind that 2 of us were Clerking
the event, we lost 4 or 5 to the local stage rally and another 5 or
more due to broken cars from the previous round at Bournemouth, so all
in all it wasn't too bad.
For those of you who couldn't make it, well you missed some very good
motorsport and a tasty BBQ on the Saturday night.
Next year we will again run a 2 day, it will be a different weekend
to avoid the clash with the Wildlife Stages at Smeatharpe, which reduced
our entry this year and there will be a few other minor alterations
to make the event more attractive. So watch out for that date and put
it in your diaries.
Nic Ayre.
Clerk of the Course
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