Tel's Tales 028 – Harewood Weekend Sprint 2014

Saturday

This year saw a good entry of 14 cars for Saturday and 11 cars for Sunday so all we needed was good weather......enough people had obviously not said their prayers because Saturday morning saw a wet track and building clouds! Oh joy! The red kite birds were flying along the hillside enjoying the breeze (gale) but most of us were trying to keep warm in our Westfield corner of the lower paddock. This was a little tricky as a few of us had do not have a reverse gear, no handbrake and need to change slicks etc which is a bit difficult on wet sloping grass but we managed ok in the end. First panic was when the a scrutineer spotted that one of Andy Hargreaves tyres has a spilt valve and was leaking air so he made a quick dash to Wetherby industrial estate for a speedy valve change and was back for practice. It was good to see Stu Hill with slicks on who has come to play in class G but he was looking a bit apprehensive and wondered about putting his ZZRs back on but we wouldnt let him.

P1 and P2 were wet but we the rain had stopped and the track was greasy and very cold so quite a few people tested parts of the course that were green rather than black and most of us spent a lot of time sideways and were all miles away from the target times.

First timed run was before lunch and the track was drier but still poor but we all had to go for as the forecast was for worse weather later. Andy Hargreaves managed to overcook it at the finish and his time was not allowed. In class G Tim Nunn drove very aggressively and posted an awesome 59.88secs followed by hard charging Matt Turner on 61.06 secs and me on 61.64 secs. Matt wasnt happy with his run, my excuse was that the car jumped out of second gear 3 times and Tim just had a smile on his face! Paul Morcom ran well on 64.54secs and Steve Everall did a PB of 65.02 secs. Graham Millar (Windy) was showing off his sideways style in the Rally Escort and was in the 66secs bracket along with Jim Henshaw. James Spicer was 67.01 secs with Lee Smith 68.07secs, Michael Skidmore 68.90 secs, Jason Brown ( the man with rock solid suspension) on 71.14secs and Andrew Lowe 77.81sesc so the novice guys were outting up a good show and loving it.

During the lunch break Tim was seen to kneel down a few times and look skywards muttering something about selling his sole to the Rain god …....... it seemed to work. James Spicer had a very hard crash at the final Quarry bend and smashed heavily into a tree. He just got onto the grass approaching the bend and the became a passenger as the car went straight on causing damage to the front and chassis. James was not too bad apart from chest bruises cause on impact and faced a miserable 4 hour journey home. Hope all goes well with your rebuild James and that the painkillers are working. There was a long delay and as we all queued up awaiting our runs it started to rain, the sky turned black and there was forked lightening as we all sat there getting absolutely soaked!!!!!!! I think Lee Smith actually ran to Windy's car and sat in the passenger seat and Steve managed to get an umbrella from a marshall.....all I got was WET WET WET. As you can imagine nobody beat the first timed runs. Our third timed runs saw a slightly drier track but despite getting faster and more used to driving in the cold and wet we could not improve. We were all in the same class so Tim' excellent drive gave him first place breaking John Hoyle's class 37 record so he was a very happy Bunny. Stu Hill was still unsure about the effectiveness of slicks but had been driving in the wet all day. As we packed up most cars looked like they had been grass tracking and were coated in mud with speed series stickers and numbers barely visible. Unlike the Ferrari cars we had not been washing and polishing our cars all day.

Sunday

Only living 25 mins away I went home had a curry and a few glasses of wine and early bed. I woke on the hour during the night to hear heavy rain......b*******! Arriving back at Harewood at 0730hrs saw wet grass, flooded fields and roads but although it was cloudy it had stopped raining, the wind was really blowing hard and in the end apart from a few light showers and a bitterly cold north wind we stayed dry. I had given myself a good talking to about getting my finger out, Matt was determined to beat us all and Tim wanted a repeat of yesterday. Everyone was looking forward to the new challenge of dealing with a drier track and improving their Saturday times but that was not going to be easy as the cold greasy surface looked evil. John Walters ( Shaggydo) was competing at his first event and we helped him through the signing on, scrutineering etc and he seemed to love it. We had a few supporters over the weekend including “the boss” Nick Algar who was admiring (like should he build one?) the bike engined cars as he wandered around the paddock.

A we went to first practice Tim's car refused to select gears and so he started tracing the fault. P1 was ok but we were all trying to check grip levels and that was the same in P2. Before P2 a few of were trying to help Tim trace the electrical fault but it proved impossible even though at one stage we thought we had it solved. By that time he went to see if he could get a double dive it was too late so he was very cheesed off. I was still having gearbox problems with second gear. As we got ready for the afternoon sessions the clouds began to gather and T1 saw a light drizzle but most of us posted reasonable times compared to Saturday. At end of T1, I led followed closely by Matt Turner, then Andy and Stu Hill

For our last run conditions were a bit drier so the majority posted their quickest runs apart from Andy Hargreaves who did a full 360 pirouette at Quarry without hitting anything and only lost 3 secs so he was trying very hard. Matt's run may have been hampered by a strange engine noise (suggested as an alternator breakdown which cam be serious as it disintegrates). I persuaded Stu Hill to stick with the slicks and push harder. He was well chuffed with his 61.05 secs

which gave home second place just in front of Matt on 61.12secs with me bagging the win with 59.72 secs setting a new class 37 record. Looks like Stu Hill is going to get some decent slicks now and Nick Algar maybe busy building a hairdrier powered car in his garage and John Walters 70.58secs left him wanting to do more events.

Terry.everall@virgin.net

Speed Series Correspondent

Class G competitor