Practice | The Race | Results

Despite the great weather the day before, Sunday morning dawned slightly cold and very foggy. Visibility was so bad that practice was delayed for over 1 1/4 hours, which threatened to delay the whole meeting. Due to this, practice was shortened from 15 minutes to 10 minutes - enough for about 6 laps of the long circuit.

Although I have raced at Cadwell several times before, this was my first visit to the long circuit, and was looking forward to it, although the thought of hurtling over The Mountain, and round the very narrow back wooded section was slightly nerve-wracking. There were only 12 cars to take part in practice - Richard Welch had unfortunately suffered an accident on the way to the circuit, and his race car was quite badly damaged, and Rob Putnam had not been able to fix the broken oil pump he suffered at Silverstone in time. The small number of cars, and the length of the circuit meant for a pretty lonely time in practice. I found it difficult to pace myself, and couldn't quite get to grips with the car at all - I eventually ended up with a time of 1:48.80, which put me 10th on the grid (out of 12), and just behind Charles Sterling. I'm sure people are going to start talking about Charles and myself, as we always seem to either qualify or finish together!

The rest of practice was pretty uneventful, expect that Steve Taylor pulled off early, suffering from car sickness! Apparently all the twists and turns of this circuit make him ill - so much so that he pulled out of the race.

The Race | Results | Practice

Having done some work on my clutch setup at Snetterton two weeks previously, I was hoping that I could make a decent start. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case, and again I lost time as I struggled to change from 1st to 2nd. I think a modification to the gear lever may cure this problem - we shall see at Snetterton...

Due to this slow getaway, I was down in 11th place, with Richard Daw now ahead of me. I managed to close up on him, and was trying to work out how to pass him when he had a huge moment turning into the Gooseneck, and couldn't quite make up his mind about which direction to spin off - so he tried all of them! All I could do was to jump on the brakes and pray I didn't hit him - luckily I managed to avoid him. This allowed me to get past him, but he restarted, and was not too far behind me. I was very keen to keep ahead of him, as this would give me 4th in class, and some more valuable championship points. Although he seemed to close up around the back part of the long circuit, I was able to pull away again as we went through the sections that make up the short circuit. On about lap 6, I noticed yellow flags waving going round Park, and saw the red Sylva Phoenix of Charles Sterling sitting on the grass - he'd very kindly managed to spin, which allowed me to pass him, as did Richard Daw. Charles soon managed to get going again, and I could see glimpses of him in my mirrors, as he tried to catch up with Richard. I really wanted to beat Charles, as he had won our private battle at Silverstone, and it was time to level the score! I thought I had a good chance, as he still had to get past Richard, and I decided to concentrate on not making any silly mistakes. The race seemed to go on for ever, as I saw Charles getting closer and closer in my mirrors, but it was with huge relief that I was the chequered flag wave. I ended up finishing 7th overall, and 4th in class - just 6 seconds behind the 3rd place car of Tim Harmer. I also managed to improve my lap time by 2 seconds over my qualifying time! Paul Gill was also very impressive - moving from 7th on the grid to finish 2nd.

Amazingly, despite the 1 1/4 hour delay to proceedings, Robin and Kathleen Knight (and all the other 750 Motor Club volunteers) did such a brilliant job that the last race finished right on schedule.

Results | Practice | The Race

Qualifying Times

Race Results