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Through the heat haze, or was it pollen haze, 24 tvr’s ventured out on 10th June to compete at the Abingdon Carnival; one of the most enjoyable sprint events of the year.  There was an inspired range of Blackpool produce on display, ranging from a threesome of Vixens, a full spectrum of Rover V8 variants, through to a modern Tuscan and T350C. 

Perhaps most importantly, we welcomed two new competitors to the Championship.  Susan Staff and Tim Scrivens both chose Abingdon to unleash their Cerberas in a competitive environment.  Tim’s deep purple 4.2 appeared familiar and indeed proved to be the “ski boot” colour inspired vehicle that starred in the TopGear “tvr Story”, although I don’t think it originally sported a “This Way Up” number plate!

The newbie battle was amazingly close; less than 0.5 seconds the difference between Tim and Susan’s similarly powered Cerb’.  One thing Tim couldn’t match was the style of Susan’s arrival at scrutineering, complete with child seat still installed!  The stress of looking after the occupant of said seat and competing against her fiancé (albeit in something not made in Blackpool …) didn’t faze her and by the end of the day Susan was looking forward to her next event, nearly as much as her imminent wedding!

Abingdon consists of two sprint courses with the overall result based on aggregate times. The Bentley course is a point and squirt and puts a premium on judging braking points, maintaining a neutral cornering stance and then maximising traction out of the corner.  In contrast, the Abingdon layout is more flowing and features a couple of high speed 4th gear corners which are as much a test of bravery as car control.  Furthermore, all our sprints at Abingdon are blessed with fine weather, are well organised and don’t feature many hard things to hit!  The event is therefore a great introduction to sprinting and it’s always interesting to see how the newcomers banzai smoking starts and sideways cornering matures into a more considered, but ultimately quicker approach by the end of the day.

As we came to terms with the practice runs it was a pleasure to see last year’s Champion, Jes Firth, relaxed, knowing his recurring engine woes had, at long last, been resolved.  He celebrated by banging in the fastest time of the morning.  Little did we know that on his return to the paddock, the curse had struck again and a surplus of fluids under the bonnet was the least of the motor’s problems. 

There followed an episode that sums of the spirit of the tvr Speed Championship.  The obvious thing to do was to sincerely commiserate with one of our leading championship contenders and then nick their points as they sit out the remainder of the day!  Instead, not only did Tim offer to trailer the afflicted vehicle home, but there were two offers of a shared drive on the afternoon’s Abingdon course. Jes plumped for a run out in Alan Bankhurst gorgeous Vixen, fellow tvr sprinters gave the thumbs up and a successful appeal was made to the organisers.

From the times achieved, Jes clearly relished the transition from block buster punch to the nimble, but nonetheless, aggressive edge of Alan’s well sorted Vixen.  After the necessary algorithm tweaks, he secured a very creditable third place for the combined event.  Meanwhile, Alan concentrated on the three way Vixen battle with Geoff Stallard and Pete Sims.  They were also joined in Class A (6 cylinder models pre dating 1992) by Charles Wootton’s S2 which reappeared on the sprint scene after dipping a toe in the water last year.  Despite Alan’s launch control explosively firing him away from the line and lingering tyre smoke, he just missed out on the Class A honours, with Geoff taking the win by a mere 0.3 seconds.

In a notable return to the sprinting circuit, Steve Heath took a break from the development program that entails strapping a supercharger onto an already bonkers wedge.  An alternative vehicle was required and the responsibility fell to the shopping trolley hack, which for Steve is a tweaked Griff’ 500.  No doubt it felt pedestrian compared to the purple wedge, but it still earned Steve some decent points on the Championship leader board.

Whilst there are a variety of corners, curves and devilish chicanes at Abingdon, between them there’s plenty of opportunity to put the boot in and use every ounce of grunt available.  As a consequence, it was the big motors that featured at the head of both absolute and handicapped times.  The fastest car by far was Dave Morris’s chevy powered race Tuscan which headed the times by an incredible two second margin.  Whilst a component of this performance comes from a ridiculous amount of horse power coupled with sticky slicks, the sheer speed of such runs must be terrifying and all credit must go to Dave for having the bottle to press the accelerator pedal at all.

The inevitably rather punishing handicap the Tuscan attracts dropped Dave down to an overall fourth place.  In second, ahead of Jes in the Cerbera / Vixen combi, lay Alan Hugh Davies’ Chimaera 500.  Alan is having a brilliant year and demonstrating just how well a decent driver can hurl a standard motor around the track – much to the chagrin of those of us piloting much more modified vehicles….

Top honours on the day went to Paul Edwards in his striking T350C.  Paul has been challenging himself in recent seasons with a rather brutal tvr powered Ginetta.  The move this season to the sublimely handling 350 has been rewarded with some stunning times and the highest average point score to date.  All of which goes to show that although Abingdon is an event that encourages newcomers to stretch themselves, it remains the drivers with skill and experience that maximise the performance on the day.

It is perhaps fitting to end this write up with a quote that Tim posted up on our email group after the event – “what really made the day so much fun was the warm welcome my wife, son and I received from all of the TVRCC competitors.  I’d like to say thank you to each and every person for making us feel so welcome, you made a fun day a truly memorable one and I can’t wait to get out there again and give the Cerb’ another good thrashing!”

So go on, sign up you know it make sense.