Article by Alan Davies

Twelve tvr’s assembled in the luxurious Goodwood paddock to do battle over two laps of this historic circuit in what turned out to be very hot and sunny conditions.  Glass fibre doesn’t conduct heat well, so we were very grateful for the shade afforded by the individual pit garages.

Goodwood is a power track and we expected the Class B cars to have it all their own way.  Adrian Duggleby in his 5.2 litre Griffith shook up the pile immediately by taking an early lead in front of the potentially faster cars of Paul Edwards (T350C) and Dave Morris (Tuscan racer).  In Class A, Ian Bannister and Paul Crossman, (in 3000S and V6 Tuscan respectively), where coming to terms with a race-track neither had visited for ten years or more.  On the far side of the paddock, practice was proving a little trying for Steve Heath’s purple monster as it broke an alternator bracket on its first (and very noisy) outing and David Balderson was putting his club socks on – more on that story later.

Owing to the small field, the first official timed runs were over by lunch time with Paul Edwards stamping his authority firmly on the proceedings with a new tvr Speed Champ “2 lap” record of 181 seconds - averaging over 95mph from a standing start ain’t half bad.  Disappointingly, Adrian couldn’t repeat his practice time owing to a tail slide at St Mary’s and so Dave Morris’ Race Tuscan took over P2 in real time. Alan Davies and Tony Bradfield are both local guys and have a great tussle at this event every year; Tony was victorious in 2007 by 2/100 of a handicap second but this year Alan was “on it” and stole the place back again by a similar margin.

On planet Cerbera, a fired up Tim (should be Team) Scrivens was ahead of Mark Harris.  Mark’s only previous experience of Goodwood was at last year’s very wet event so it was back to school for him as he relearned the track (at twice the speed) in the dry – a quite different experience.  Tim’s lap time improvements during the day brought him under the psychological 200 second barrier for the first time – his best being in the early 198s.  Well done Tim!

Running in a separate class due to championship commitments, David Balderson in the Gold 3.5 Tasmin FHC was taking large chunks of time off his practice time, no doubt helped by the natty tvr purple “plus 4” socks that he displayed at signing on.  Small children in the paddock were seen pointing and laughing from afar which I thought was very rude.

By the time we got to the second runs, the temperature had risen sharply and most were struggling to improve on their earlier times; notable exceptions were: Steve Cox who showed us all how it should be done by taking off 2 seconds on each run, David Balderson who took off a huge seven seconds, and Tim Scrivens and Tony Bradfield both of whom took a couple of seconds off.  All was not well at the head of the field though; Paul made an unplanned visit to the Armco and put some deep scores in the rear wing of his T350C whilst Adrian’s Griff suffered from a full throttle anomaly whilst entering the Fordwater kink at 130mph. Luckily he had the presence of mind to shut the engine down immediately.  For those who don’t know Goodwood, Fordwater is taken almost flat in fifth gear and so is absolutely not the place to lose traction or break down. In the purple group, Steve Heath’s car’s problems continued, breaking a throttle cable AND a steel diff mount; no completed timed runs so no points for Steve this time out unfortunately.  More positively, fashion icon David was interviewed about his purple socks on the local news and there was an unconfirmed rumour that Kate Moss had asked if she could have a go with his Tasmin.

Going into Run 3, the field was thinning out as Duggleby and Heath had retired, Ian Bannister, having picked up the new course record for Class A, headed back North, and Dave Morris’ hasty throttle cable repair proved insufficiently robust to last a whole lap and so pulled off at Madgewick.   Coxy and Paul Crossman were the only two drivers to improve their times during the third runs.

When Mr Cox had finished punching buttons on his computer the final results showed a well-deserved victory for Paul Edwards.  Adrian, Alan and Tony, separated only by handicap fractions took the next three places.  Dave Morris’ 6-litre Chevy engined Race Tuscan came in a close fifth.

Finally, it was good to see some Tivs in the paddock as Woody and his chums had come to watch us at play.

Full and detailed results can be seen on our website
http://www.tvrspeedchampionship.co.uk/