Article by Simon Cole

Saturday was lovely. Warm and sunny – I really thought summer had arrived.

Unfortunately the Sprint was on Sunday! The weather forecast for a fine morning proved erroneous and it rained all day.

My preparations had been unusually scrupulous. After all, this is the big one. An unnerving blast through a forest at the home of Chobham armour.

In addition to my usual preparation of sticking on competition numbers and a timing strut, I investigated the source of fluffy debris on the carpet.

Wayne of Guglielmi Motor Sport suspected mice. Well, the car is stored in a barn so why not? I removed the battery from the foot well and gave the car a good clean out but never found the culprit.

tvr Car Club had an excellent entry of fourteen cars for Longcross. It was good to see John Pollard, Peter Sims, Chris Shepherd, Alan Davies and Simon Cole out for their first event of the season. Simon and Annette had driven for 5 hours down from Scotch Corner. Alan was suffering with flu.

I was personally pleased to see five Chimaera entries again.

I have been developing a theory that speed is directly related to driver’s age. I believe that ageing brains are a bit like early computers. In a speeding car there is simply too much data to process to operate quickly. If proved correct, I will have no need of any other excuses. At North Weald there were five Chimaeras, 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 litre cars, all basically set up in the same way. The quickest driver was Nicholas Blacklee who is the youngest, 3.4 seconds ahead of the oldest and slowest driver, me, driving the same 4.5 litre car.

At Longcross I was sharing the car with my fearless younger brother Andrew. I thought he should be able to mix it with the greatly improved Michael Horn and Hugh Davies who are apparently eating two Shreddies for breakfast this year.

tvr sprinters are a pretty sane bunch on the whole who like to enjoy their motor sport with minimal risk.  Longcross in the wet was therefore not a sensible place to be. I would liken it to a fairground thrill-ride. It’s bloody scary but you aren’t going to die. The problem with Longcross is that you aren’t sure about the not dying bit. 120 miles an hour through the trees in the rain in a Chimaera is frightening. God only knows what it must have been like for the drivers of the fastest tvrs. Jes reported wheel spin all the way round in his Cerbera!

The drivers wired on adrenalin including Jes and Simon of course, rose to the challenge and set blistering times. John Pollard, Alan Davies and Adrian Duggleby were not far behind. It was Simon’s first trip to Longcross and he truly excelled in appalling conditions.

 

Those of you familiar with powerboat racing will know what a ‘rooster tail’ looks like.  Something very similar was to be observed behind Jes’ Cerbera speeding along to the finish on soft ‘B’ list tyres with minimal tread.

Making my way across the parvé tank-testing course hoping to take a photograph of this phenomenon for ‘Sprint’, I was reprimanded by officials for being ‘out of bounds’. Quite what Qinitec think they are hiding at Longcross is beyond me. After all, the venue is earmarked for housing development shortly. Perhaps there are skeletons lurking amongst the trees?

Qinitec are obsessive with security. Even walking the course has to be done in a group resembling the start of the London Marathon. It’s quite sociable walking a couple of miles with 150 people but not a lot of use for planning your course.

Virtually everyone had spins or briefly visited the ‘out of the bounds’ areas of Longcross. Fortunately there was only very minor damage done to one or two tvrs. I’m proud to report that we caused no red flag incidents. Over-enthusiasm in the other classes caused mayhem. It was stop and go all day with the tow trucks working overtime. This meant that the planned third timed run was cancelled as we ran out of time. For those of us saving the best ‘till last it was a bit frustrating. Even so, it doesn’t quite explain how four of us managed to go round slower on timed runs than in practice!

My excuse was going to be along the lines of ‘mouse sightings’, ‘trouser legs’ and ‘the Snake’ – but of course I have now abandoned excuses. I didn’t manage to dislodge the mouse and there was more debris in the car the following day. Perhaps it’s planning to come to Spa & Le Mans with me in June!

The jury is still out on my driver’s age theory. Chimaera times were close. Mike Horn pipped me by two hundredths of a second. Andrew and I tied exactly at 153.26 on our first practice run.

Longcross will be remembered as a unique event.

It is quite exhausting but you drive home with the satisfaction of a job well done. You tried your best, released a few endorphins, ate some lovely bacon rolls, enjoyed great company and your car is still in one piece ready for the next event – result!