Article by Steve Dennis

Harewood in mid summer, what a beautiful place to be. The weather forecast was for a hot, dry day, so we should have known better than to take sun cream with us.

15 tvrs attended, Howard Bryan turned up in a 400SE Wedge instead of his Tasmin 280, so there were 5 in class A and 10in class B.

A few newish faces: Simon Smith in 2.9 Cosworth engined S3, and Michael Archer in his 4 litre Tuscan, and some local experts in Griffs: Steve Boscombe in his lovely 4.3 big valve, and Chris Lumbard in his 5 litre, mixed in with the usual suspects.

The practice runs passed without any real dramas, In class A, that mythical white Vixen led on the road and handicap, with a 71.57 closely followed by the yellow one of Stewart Lobley on 72.44, and John Pollard’s 3000S on 72.67. In class B it was Matthew Oakley leading Paul Edwards from Simon Cole on road times, but the algorithms changed it to Steve Lyle from Simon then Matthew.

The first competitive runs really decided the day, because although we didn’t know it at the time, the pleasant sunshine was about to be washed away. So it’s just as well that there was some keen competition from the word go.

Simon took his white wedge up the hill in 65.90, beating Matthew by a quarter of a second and Paul’s T350 by another 5 hundredths, Pretty Close! But don’t forget the algorithms.  Steve Lyle’s 69.06, on 1A tyres, was enough to push past Paul and Matthew, both on 1Bs, on handicap.  A lot of the other Class B runners continued to improve on their practice times, Howard Bryan, Mike Horn, Michael Archer and John Carter all improved on their practice times and Steve Broscombe showed great consistency, all his runs were 71 point something!

In class A Steve’s Vixen improved by 1 hundredth, but Stewart found almost a second to take the class win. John on the other hand lost a second, but retained his 3rd place on handicap. Simon’s Cosworth engined S3 continued to improve with every run and Pete Sims was robbed of a chance to improve on his first timed run by the weather.

The rest of the day was one of ups and downs. A fairly small entry and slick organisation by Trackrod MC meant the chance of extra runs, but the weather made them irrelevant so far as the results went. Most people’s 2nd and 3rd runs were at least 7 seconds slower than the first, but some drivers showed amazing consistency on their wet runs.

Some decided that there was no improvement to be had & went home after their first run. Some people wished they had. Michael Archer’s Tuscan survived a spin coming out of Willow on his 3rd run, but was less lucky when he went off after the first corner on the 4th run, necessitating a trip home on a trailer.