Stephen's Story
Entry posted by stephenh
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Curborough July 5th 2015 Stephen’s story
Arrived at the track at 7.20am to find most of the Westfields already there and ready for signing on and scrutineering.
Unfortunately the driver’s briefing wasn’t until 8.50 but we managed to fill the time! The briefing was exceedingly brief for the 99% who had driven the track before and rather more detailed for the few who hadn’t.
P1 arrived to find that Graham Frankland had forgotten to put his timing strut on! Howard Gaskin went fastest on 60.50 with me chasing at a rather slower 62.11
P2. This got going but the 11th car to start, John Roberts in the electric Westfield, had a major ‘off’ rolling over two or three times with severe damage to the car. John was left suspended from the up turned car – a lesson to keep your seat belt tightly fastened – and the marshalls and organisers acted extremely promptly in extracting him. The paramedics eventually gave him, the all clear and he emerged with a plaster on his elbow! By all accounts his helmet was a complete write off and the car didn’t look much better.
Eventually P2 resumed with Howard and I swapping places at 60.15 and 59.84 respectively.
Lunch was next and after I had enjoyed my burger lunch, Sally and my sister arrived with a lovely slimming smoked salmon sandwich for me. It made a tasty pudding.
T1 got underway and Howard was fastest in our class at 59.54 secs. But my 60.93 was (although second fastest in class) frustratingly over one second slower than P2.
T2 stopped soon after it began when the cloud burst descended and gazebo’s tried to be kites, chairs had to be folded, everything had to be shoved in the car including us! It poured and poured for about 20 mins and then the sun gradually came out. Racing didn’t resume for a little while to let the track drain and dry out a bit. Fortunately it is a fast drying track and we got going. None of the times were anywhere near T1 but the weather got better and better so when the opportunity for T3 was given, the Westfields all went for it. A good third of the other cars had left but the reduced field enjoyed their run.
In Class 2A the Westfields were 2nd Rich Abraham, 4th Jason Brown and 6th Colin Way.
In Class B Howard was 1st with 59.19, I was 2nd with 60.54 PB, 3rd Graham Frankland 63.96, 5th David Richings and 6th Dave Reed.
Howard was 6th fastest overall for the day and I was 7th.
A good day for most of us thankfully not resulting in a tragedy and as far as the weather is concerned it was exactly the same as last year!
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