Article by Steve Cox

The words "sunshine" and "Devon" seldom appear in the same sentence as those who visited Wiscombe last April will readily testify, but yesterday was the exception that proves the rule and we had glorious sunshine from dawn till dusk.

There were 9 tvrs registered for Wiscombe Park on the 7th May but Chris Shepherd sought his excitement on the public roads and Chris Hodgson is bound by his sponsorship deal to run in the ASWMC; so that left 7 of us to battle it out - and what a battle it was. The nimble
lightweight Vixen run by nimble lightweight Alan Bankhurst (total weight little more than a wasp) was keen to show that a tight twisty hill is Vixen country and a best practice time in the morning of 49.93 showed Alan's commitment from the off - only Coxy's 48.48 was quicker, but on handicap the difference wasn't nearly enough ((:o(. Mike Horn, Geoff Stallard, Mike Pollard and Alan Davies were all in the low 51s while the gremlins took hold of Pete Sims gearbox and managed to shake the first gear out of it.

Times in the afternoon sessions continued to improve - JP put in a useful 50.83, Mike Horn shaved off another half second and Alan Davies nipped under the 50 with a 2 second improvement to 49.76. Geoff Stallard had a little moment and was disappointed with his
51.61. I put in a 48.29 but I knew it was still too slow.

Going into the second timed run, Bankhurst just refused to go slower despite the all the confidence sapping encouragement I gave him during the break and with a 2nd time of 49.51 he was going to be very hard to beat - but we gave it our best shot anyway! Pollard's second
time of 50.68 was spirited to say the least but it was Geoff Stallard who pulled it out of ar8e for the final run. A cracking 49.68 and suddenly Geoff was amongst it and there was some nail biting as I calc'd the final handicap times.

I've published the points and leaderboard from Wiscombe but there are some trends developing as you can see - keep an eye on the averages. Points on the day looked like this:

Alan Bankhurst 25:00
Geoff Stallard 24:41
John Pollard 24:21
Steve Cox 23:75
Alan Davies 23:64
Mike Horn 23:02
Pete (3 gears Sims) 17:19