Round 7 – Sunday 16th September 2007.
Sadly the weather was not the main topic of conversation as everyone gathered for scrutineering on Round 7 of the Rallysprint Championship.
Everyone had heard the tragic news that Colin McCrae, his son and two of their friends had been killed in a helicopter accident near the McCrae home on Saturday afternoon. This is a terrible loss for the sport and everyones thoughts were with the families of those who had died.
Colin McCrae’s name and his computer games are probably the first taste of rallying many youngsters have and hopefully his legacy will continue as we get more youngsters joining our club.
We had 15 cars enter and it was nice to see more juniors entered. Polly and Steffi were back and a new member Cameron was starting his first Rallysprint. All three were to us the RPM Skodas. Roy Gravestock was back from the holidays etc and was looking to continue his run of maximum scores. Craig and Sam Schofield had new dampers front and rear as they continue to develop the BMW. They had also brought Zoe along to help with the marshalling, Zoe’s reward for getting up early on a Sunday was the finish line flag marshal, probably the dustiest job on the track.
The first two stages were both Old Faithful – the long blast down the straight into Paddy’s bend and then the short infield loops to make up 2 laps. These 2 stages got the cobwebs blown away before we started on the really testing stages. With parts of the track being driven both ways on the same stage taking the right route was crucial as getting a maximum time would ruin any chance of a good result. With this in mind most drivers could be seen studying the stage diagrams. Everyone managed to find their way round with the exception of Martin Goss in the Golf who missed a junction and collected a maximum.
At the lunch halt Roy Gravestock had built up a comfortable 14 second lead over Alex Cannon in Class A with Pedro a further 16 seconds behind.
Things were tighter in Class B with Darren Knights leading Jim Hedgecock by just under 4 seconds. These two had broken clear of Craig Schofield who was 25 seconds further back.
The afternoon session consisted of a repeat of Stage 3 and Stages 5 & 6 were another tricky combination of various parts the infield linked together by the outer track. The positions remained fairly static over the last few stages.
Roy managed to pull out a further 11 seconds from Alex Cannon to take another Class win, 5 out of 5 starts. Pedro brought the Castrol sponsored Escort home in third 31 seconds behind Alex. Andrew Springett again had a good run in the little Mini finishing fourth 11 seconds ahead of Cameron in the RPM Skoda. This was a very good result for Cameron in his first event with us – congratulations Cameron.
In Class B Darren and Jim set a time 5 hundreths of a second apart on stage 4 and on Stage 5 Jim took nearly 3 seconds back off Darren. Going into the last stage these 2 were split by just over 1 second. Jim completed the stage first with a time of 3.54.98. Darren could not relax and had to maintain the pace from earlier. He stopped the clocks with a time of 3.51.66. This was enough to give him the victory by 4.57 seconds.
In the juniors Alex Cannon was again first in class with Cameron finishing second ahead of Polly then Steffi. It was nice to see the juniors out again and we hope we can keep the entries up in this class.
It was another great days sport and the usual thanks must go to all the marshals and officials and not forgetting Pauline supplying the food and drinks all day.
The next round is 30th September 2007, with two rounds to go there are still plenty of points available.
Plans are being drawn up for some other “social” events after the final rallysprint has run and into the winter. Look out for the emails and keep checking the web site.
Darren Knights
Club Chairman.
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