Article by Steve Cox

Although the sprint and hillclimb season is hotting up in terms of the participant commitment, it is showing no signs of warming in climatic terms. Round 3 at Loton Park showed every sign of being abandoned at 6:30am when a huge snow cloud emptied itself on this popular Shropshire venue (and the rest of the country). The good news was that the ground temperature was sufficient for the snow to quickly disappear from the tarmac leaving a beautiful winter
wonderland of trees in the deer park.

At 7am my moby started to ring as our drivers called forward to see if the event would run. Steve Dennis had experienced an 8-wheel drift as car and trailer slewed its way round a roundabout during his long drive from Hull. Jes Firth called to say that Oxfordshire was impassable and that the Cerbera was sliding about all over the place in a foot of snow. I couldn't see how it was different from the way he usually drove it!

Unbelievably, at 9am, the meeting started on time and we set about our practice runs in temperatures somewhere between zero and zero½ degrees centigrade. During a snowy practice 1, the local knowledge showed as Matt Oakley, Steve (sideways) Lyle, Paul (rebuild) Edwards and Stewart (knobbly) Lobley all showed signs of great courage (foolhardiness?) but come practice 2 we could sense some moving and shaking going on. The pesky Vixens of Steve Dennis, Geoff Stallard
and Mike Roe began to show why the old cars were so formidable in their day - and still so hard to beat in 2008.

Earlier that morning, I had walked the hill with Matt Oakley who had recently purchased a data logger. He explained to me how a reading of less than 1G on a bend meant you were going too slowly. I took this important snippet of information on-board and thought about it as I drove at much less than 1G around the tight bends on a freezing cold, snowy day in April. Must try harder (I think this means).

After the first timed run, I calculated the handicap times and it was interesting to note that Geoff Stallard's Vixen (shod with regular A list road-going tyres) was Stig of the Dump on algorithm. The Vixens on B list tyres (Steve Dennis and Stewart Lobley) were not getting the full benefit of the softer compound in the freezing conditions and were feeling the strain of the handicap loading – Steve Dennis was particularly frustrated that he couldn't repeat his blistering run from the earlier practice session. Mike Roe's Vixen broke a roller-rocker and his day was curtailed unfortunately.

In class B, Paul Edward's recently enhanced T350C was a cigarette paper in front of Matt Oakley's purple Griff but Steve Lyle's V8S was taking full advantage of its handicap advantage in the cold. Simon Smith's Tamora was also beginning to make a show.

In the middle orders, another skirmish had broken out between the Griffs of new boy (and Shropshire RO) Simon Lacey, recent convert Jeff Allan (Cerbera), Paul Moakes (V8S) and Pete Watson in the TMS Griff. Pete's car still has no roof and has suffered every type of extreme weather known to Michael Fish in recent weeks. At North Weald, you could have put fish in it!

As we lined up for the final run, another dark grey cloud put the horizon into shadow so we knew there would be no re-runs or second chances. Everyone behaved and the times were shaved a little closer.

The top 6 places were spread over less than 1.5 seconds with Geoff Stallard taking home the gong and a coveted "Red 25" for the outright win. Messrs Lobley and Dennis finished less than half a second apart and in class B, Paul Edwards hung onto his lead just shading Matt Oakley by 0.02 of a handicap second. Simon Smith and Paul Moakes both improved their times but Jeff Allan and Pete Watson wrestled with (not in!) the worsening conditions.

The leaderboard after Round 3 shows just how close it's going to be this year – especially in class A. Those pesky Vixens fight between themselves at each event but they're equally keen to start a squabble with the big cars too.

With 19 more events to look forward to, there's bound to be a spat somewhere near you sometime soon – please come along and say hi.

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