Castle Combe – Saturday 16th September

Pictures courtesy of Chris Roberts

Steve Watton and Roger Connell had mixed fortunes at Castle Combe on the 16th.  Steve had taken a Supertrapp with him to put into the exhaust to help with the silencing regulations.  He duly installed it and went out for qualifying.  The air was full of a heavy mist and he took it easy for a couple of laps to allow everything to warm up.  However when he decided to press on, nothing happened.  He was pressing the accelerator but the car wasn’t going any faster and he was struggling to get into top because the engine was not revving sufficiently in third for him to change up.  It just shows how much performance one of these devices saps from the car.

Roger had fitted similar device to his exhaust and the two of them ended up on the third and sixth rows of the grid.  Steve lining up 6th with a 1min 23.64secs, more than 4 seconds off the pole position time set by Roy McCarthy in his V8 MGB, and Roger lined up 13th on the grid with a 1min 27.47.

Steves’ Griffith had been much quieter than the noise limit required so he had room to make a couple of adjustments to the Supertrapp.  This he duly did over the break, and just starting the car up whilst stationary he could feel the difference in the engine response.  Hopefully things would be different in the race.

This proved to be the case and he made a fantastic start and went round everyone, slightly on the grass, into the lead before the cars had reached the kink at Folly!  He really put the hammer down and had pulled out a 6 second lead by the end of lap 4, but at that point the safety car was deployed to allow clearing up of a coming together between a TR6 and another V8 MGB at Camp Corner.  This allowed the field to close back up to Steve.  The safety car pulled off with three laps to go and Steve made a reasonable fist of the re-start, but, whether he was conscious of cold brakes or not braked just too early for quarry and although he retained the lead he had given the initiative back to pole man Roy McCarthy who was now closing in and going in to Tower later in the lap Roy dived down the inside.  The two very nearly made contact but gave each other just enough room, but Roy was now in front.

Roger mean time had hit problems of his own.  He was progressing nicely, when suddenly going into Quarry all his electrics failed.  (No surely not, not on a tvr!).  He coasted to a halt on the grass looking down to see what the problem was.  Then he spotted the isolator switch had turned itself off, probably a result of the extremely bumpy track.  By the time he had found the problem, re-engaged it and got back on the track however he was now a full lap down.  With the safety car intervention he never really had a chance of recovering the lost ground so unfortunately ended the race in last position, a lap down.  All due to those bumps.

Roy and Steve however were going at it hammer and tongs at the front and were now both lapping in the 1min 17second bracket, 2 seconds faster than the pole time and for Steve a full 6 seconds quicker than the mornings best effort.  By now both cars tyres were pretty shot and although Steve battled hard and got half alongside a couple of times he never really got into a position where he could make a move stick and finished in second place 0.5 of a second behind the very worthy winner Roy McCarthy.

Mugged by the safety car!

The final round of this year’s championship is at Snetterton on October 7th

For full results look on www.msttiming.com - click on CCRC (Castle Combe Racing Club) and then the date.