Harewood 6th& 7thJuly 2019

Once a year the speed series circus visits God’s own county to tackle the longest hillclimb in the country at Harewood. I have to report that the weather was fantastic on both days with both sun and warm weather despite a few threatening clouds so our decision to move the event to July rather than September seemed to pay off. The only downside is that due to its popularity there is always a big entry and we only achieved 2 practice and 2 timed runs on both days but a lot of time was lost due to drivers having spins as they became over excited and forgot where the grip was. The drivers on Saturday were Richard Houlgate (class B), John Hoyle (class F on ZZR) plus Steve Everall, Matt Turner and Terry Everall all in class G on slicks. Five Yorkshire puddings and one from Chester. 

It was good to see Richard back out in his rebuilt car as well as Steve in his new Fireblade car (aka Terry’s  spare car!). The day started poorly with scrutineering at 100hrs with our first practice run at 1115. Before that both my car and John Hoyle’s moved down the grass slope on their own whilst warming up the engines and nearly hit the cars opposite and stopping John’s car damaged both his leg and bodywork.  In P1 Matt Turner was having bad gear change issues following a modification to his flatshifter system. He did not sort out the problem until timed run 1 when he discovered that 2 wires were the wrong way round making the ignition cut on the downshift instead of the upshift. Steve was still finding things a bit tricky to use as everything is different to his previous car so was a little off the pace. In P2 Matt was too fast through Quarry , the last corner before the finish and had a big spin but kept out of the gravel traps and avoided the Armco barrier. It was clear that John Hoyle on ZZR tyres was going very well and Matt was hoped up to beat the competition.

T1 started at 1500 by which time most of us were getting a bit annoyed with progress. Most of us had a better T2 than T1 and the results were as follows:

Richard Houlgate        68.23

John Hoyle                   59.58

Matt Turner                59.59

Terry Everall                60.68

Steve Everall               72.83

John Hoyle was 2 seconds quicker than target and was back to his old self going very quickly indeed.

Sunday saw the arrival of Mark Bishop (Class A) and no Richard Houlgate who had to meet up with friends in Harrogate and York. Mick Dent as another Yorkshire pudding joined in the battle in his slick shod class H Busa. Once again the day started with a couple of issues. Firstly I bent down toward my car and cut my forehead on a roll cage bracket and later we spotted a loose nut on Steve wishbone mount. It was good to see lots of spectators and some Westfield support including Paul Aspden and Paul Pocklington who was marshalling at Quarry bend. Just for the record there were two Margaret Everall,s spectating! 

Mark Bishop had an awful day as his engine blew up due to the crank bolt coming loose and messing up the valve timing etc so let’s hope he is out for Blyton next weekend. Steve was still being a bit tentative as he did not want to damage the car before Blyton. Mick Dent was chasing a hard target time of 57.20 set by Dave Cleaver last year. John, Matt and I were battling again and I think John had a rerun and posted an incredible 58.22 secs beating the record easily again on ZZR tyres and he did not take his second timed run as he had scored 101 points. Matt and I were looking for the points in class G and Matt had the upper hand recording a great 58.67 against a target  of  59.23 and was well pleased. Almost at the end of the day and on T2 Steve and I got a re run and then I was red flagged twice more before going for my last run. I did not know how much fuel I had left as I only started with about 3/4 gallon but I risked it. I had a long wait whist the track was cleared and I knew Matt  and John would be watching how I went as a lot was at stake. The consecutive runs were logged in brain and helped as I pushed the car through the corners and braked as late as possible for the bends. 

As I saw the clock I punched the air as it read 57.93secs to break the class record and go quicker than Matt and John. I also think that only Dave Cleaver has gone quicker in a Westfield class.

So despite there not being many of us there the completion was great and close

Mark Bishop    DNS

John Hoyle       58.22

Matt Turner    58.67

Terry Everall    57.93

Steve Everall   75.17

Mick Dent        60.72

See you at Blyton

Terry Everall