TEL's TALES 071/16

The third visit of the season and the climax of our speed series saw 22 competitors plus Dave Cleaver who was tyre testing. The overall championship had already been sewn up by John Loudon so the pressure was off him but there was a great battle between Maurici Tevilla and Barny Francis which would be decided over the weekend. Derek Hodder was tyring to overhaul me to get 4^th overall and Matt Turner was in with a chance of beating me for the class G championship. Friday afternoon saw many of us setting up and enjoying the late afternoon sunshine but dreading the rain forecast for Saturday. Sure enough at about 3am I was woken by the noise of heavy rain on the motorhome roof. By morning it was stil raining and the track was soaking wet with standing water on many corners so there would be no cutting of apexes. For the slick shod cars in class G, H and J2 this meant we all put our wet tyres on and in act they stayed on all day! There was too much going on over the weekend for me to give you a full run down as we were in covered garages as well as in the paddock so it was hard to keep up with events. Most people had spins, big slides, gear shift issues and in Matt Turner's case a red oil warning light that worried him all weekend. The timing was causing a bit of concern as some times were clearly wrong and faster cars caught slower cars which messed up the timings and produced several reruns. Indeed Gary Bunn had so many reruns that he was nicknamed “Re Run Bun” and Barny Francis nearly ran out of fuel as he did more reruns than Gary! The conditions during the day were very wet and it was only on our second and unfortunately final timed runs tah the track dried a little. As the road going cars ran more than an hour later than the slick cars they were the quickest Westfields. Despite trying his hardest Maurici Revilla could not beat Barny Francis who was the fastest Westfield and nearly took the National B fastest time of the day whilst also securing the Overall Novice Championshipso he was very pleased. Roz Kennet won the fastest lady trophy on the day and Barny picked up fastest novice.

The evening celebrations were great and quite noisy as the 20 or so Westfield crew took over the bar and the booze flowed. Richard Kerr had a free massage from Julie Hodder who pinned him to the floor and she was later seen sandwiched on the settee between Richie and Tim all wearing ginger wigs( whoops..except Julie).After we were thrown out at about 1130pm Barny finished the evening befriended the infamous Richie and Tim duo who had a date with Captan Morgan. After the bottle was finished Barny left for his bed. Next thing he knew it was about 5am and he had apparently spent a very uncomfortable in the gents loos overnight! He was up bright and breezy ready for battle on Sunday as we woke to a glorious sunny day. At lunchtime we gathered together to congratulate John Loudon on winning the overall championship. He is a worthy winner and has set some great times over the years and his persiverance has paid off. Sunday saw us get 2 practices and 2 timed runs in dry conditions although P1 was a bit slippy. We had a stoppage for sheep on the track and timing issues (reruns) lost us valuable track time. Highlight of the day was Derek Hodder breaking the class H record and moving into 4^th place overall and moving me down to 5^th as I was beaten by Tim Nunn and Matt Turner on both days. Mark Anson won his first trophy in the OMS and was very pleased with how it went. All cars kept running and were not damaged as far as I know despite the usual mechanical and electrical gremlins that happen. Dave Cleaver was testing his car on a combination of slicks and ZZRs but I think his gearbox shift system was not playing ball. In summary I think everyone had a great weekend but struggled with the traffic jams on the way home. Hope to see many of you at the Awards dinner and hopefully out competing next year.

Terry Everall

Class G competitor

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