Round 3 - Dudley

The clocks had gone forward an hour overnight but even so we still had 20 drivers present for practice. Kevin Willis overslept until 10:00 and decided not to come. Martin Jackson was on Mothers day duties so missed the morning racing but turned up for the afternoon. Chas was looking much better after a good nights sleep. Eddie Grice was a late arrival but he had not been around on Saturday when the earlier than normal start was agreed. After Eddie had been given a quick practice we started the individual heats.

Matthew Siddall (19.82 laps) won the first heat with Alex Hackett-Evans beating his dad to take second place. Trevor Tennant took the second heat with a very impressive run of 26.87 laps on White lane. This score was just 9 parts short of Chris Thomas's 1/32nd Falcon track record. I knew that Trevor's score would take some beating and in my first run on my favourite yellow lane I was not surprised that I was almost half a lap short. Even the super production racers in heat 5 could not match Trevor's score. However in heat six both Chris Thomas 29.55 laps on his least preferred Red lane and Paul Shepherd 27.54 laps on Yellow set the new target. Martin withdrew from this heat having still not got his Super production car ready. Steve Sargent moved into forth overall on 26.74 laps.

Heat 7 was the first of the second round heats and all three drivers improved on their first run. Matthew took the victory with 20.54 laps. Alex once again beat his Dad. Only Mark Croston improved in heat 8, however in Heat 9 all four drivers improved, with David Sargent winning with 24.71 laps on Blue just 41 parts ahead of Roddy Morrison. In heat 10 Eddie improved to 25.46 laps. My first choice car had gear problems in the warm up and my second car was just not good enough to challenge Trevor's score hence I retired after 3 laps. All three super production drivers in heat 11 improved their scores, Stuart Tennant winning with 26.46 laps. This was still 41 parts short of his dad's Falcon score but was good enough to put him into 4th place overall. In heat 12 Paul improved by over a lap to record 28.77 just 78 parts short of Chris's leading score.

In heat 13, the first of the third round, Paul Hackett-Evans improved to 23.52 laps this time beating Matthew who also improved to 21.68. In heat 14 Dave Homer recorded 26.64 laps, which moved him into 4th overall. In heat 15 only Richard Wallace improved recording his best score of 23.06 laps. In heat 17 I knew that I had to beat 26.64 to take fourth overall and 26.87 to take the top Falcon score. I don't normally like Red but after the warm up I felt that my car, with new gear fitted, was going well. After 3 minutes of driving at ten tenths and without an off I recorded 27.52 Laps to move into 3rd place overall and set a new Falcon track record. No doubt Chris will be wanting to race 1/32nd Falcon cars on a club night now so that he can get his record back! In the next heat Stuart recorded 26.96 laps to push his dad out of the A final. Either Steve or Martin could still push Stuart out of the A final with a good run in the last heat however no one improved their scores.

Name	Heat 1	Heat 2	Heat 3	Best
Chris Thomas	29.55	27.66	26.30	29.55
Paul Shepherd	27.54	28.77	26.30	28.77
Graham Thomas	26.39	3.00	27.52	27.52
Stuart Tennant	25.52	26.46	26.96	26.96
Trevor Tennant	26.87	25.69	26.30	26.87
Steve Sargent	26.74	25.66	25.54	26.74
Dave Homer	25.96	25.50	26.64	26.64
Eddie Grice	23.70	25.46	24.10	25.46
Sandy Parker	25.20	24.95	25.30	25.3
Ralph Parker	24.47	24.30	25.07	25.07
David Sargent	24.07	24.71	22.72	24.71
Roddy Morrison	22.50	24.30	23.54	24.3
Mark Croston	22.30	23.95	23.58	23.95
Martin Ellis	0.00	23.78	23.15	23.78
Chas Keeling	22.08	23.59	23.29	23.59
Andy Brown-Searle	21.50	23.55	23.53	23.55
Paul Hackett-Evans	11.47	14.97	23.54	23.54
Richard Wallace	22.76	22.79	23.06	23.06
Stephen Siddall	21.96	22.55	21.55	22.55
Matthew Siddall	19.82	20.54	21.68	21.68
Alex Hackett-Evans	13.50	16.07	15.72	16.07

Stephen Siddall beat his son Mathew and Alex to with the F final. Andy Brown took the E Final and Martin Ellis the D final. Mark Croston second place in the D final gave him 3rd place in Novice Falcon. Sandy Parker beat her dad, David Sergeant and Roddy Morrison to win the C final. Steve Sergeant using a super production car won the B final from Trevor Tenant who by finishing second was the top Falcon Novice driver and second in overall Falcon. Dave Homer who was just 5 parts of a lap in front of Eddie Grice took third place. The A final was won by Chris Thomas from Paul Shepherd with myself third. This was the same first three as on the previous day at Oakland's but this time Chris led for most of the race and I was never near to Paul and was having to concentrate on keeping Stuart in fourth place..

A Final	Lane	Score	Overall Points	Falcon Open	Falcon Novice
Chris Thomas	Red	47.00	50
Paul Shepherd	Blue	46.00	47
Graham Thomas	White	44.00	45	50
Stuart Tennant	Yellow	43.00	43

B Final
Steve Sargent	Blue	43.72	41
Trevor Tennant	White	43.13	39	47	50
Dave Homer	Red	41.11	37	45	47
Eddie Grice	Yellow	41.06	35	43

C Final
Sandy Parker	White	42.95	33	41
David Sargent	Yellow	42.49	31	39
Ralph Parker	Blue	41.00	29	37
Roddy Morrison	Red	36.00	27	35

D Final
Martin Ellis	White	42.00	25
Mark Croston	Blue	38.00	23	33	45
Chas Keeling	Yellow	36.00	21


E Final
Andy Brown-Searle	Blue	41.00	20	31
Richard Wallace	White	38.00	19	30
Paul Hackett-Evans	Yellow	37.00	18	29


F Final
Stephen Siddall	White	37.00	17	28	43
Matthew Siddall	Blue	35.00	16	27	41
Alex Hackett-Evans	Yellow	28.00	15	26	39

Again we had 11 teams for the team race so we decided to stay with 15-minute segments. The only change to the teams being Eddie Grice replacing Kevin Willis as Trevor Tenants partner. To enable Roddy and Richard an early departure we amended the race sheet so that they were in heats 1,3,5,and 7. Having swapped the teams around I then had people complaining that they were alongside potentially slower teams than what they should have been so I made more changes. The result, which I didn't notice until it was too late, was that Aces Inc ended up in both the third heat on red and the fourth heat on Yellow. Luckily they accepted this situation and I didn't have to make any other alterations to the race sheet. Thanks to Stuart and Sandy for being so helpful and I do apologise again for this error.

As explained above I made several changes to the heats with the results that some teams had their third run before others had their second. Because of this it was difficult to keep track of which teams were likely to take the honours. Four of the top contenders were in heat 2 and I (139.58laps) had a tremendous battle with Paul Shepherd (139.47 laps) for the whole of the race. David Sargent was only a lap down on 138.01 while Area2 scored 135.72 to keep them in contention. Aces Inc did well in heat 3 to record 134.56 but they only scored 125.96 in the next heat. I hope my mistake of giving them 2 runs together was not responsible for this. Also in heat 4 were Laurel and Hardy and a score of 138.03 coupled with 133.72 in heat 1 put them into a strong position. In heat 5 Area 2 scored 132.21 to put them about 3 laps down on Laurel and Hardy. The top three teams after 1 run each were in heat 6 and Chris Thomas recorded what was to be the best run of the day with 143.29 laps on White lane. SDS scored 134.51 to move them above Laurel and Hardy but SCD Roadhogs fell away with a score of 129.17 on Red. Aces inc had another good run in heat 7 with 133.57 on Blue lane. In heat 8 Chris was on Blue lane and was really going for it. At the half way mark he was just over 75 laps which if repeated in the second half would have given him a massive 150 laps. However after about 9 minutes the gears failed. Chris changed the gear and checked the motor which didn't appear to have moved but the time lost in the pits meant a score of only 129.11 laps and a reduced overall lead for Oakland's 1 of just 3 laps. SDS consolidated second place with 135.05 while Laurel and Hardy kept in third with 131.47. In heat 10 area 2 scored 138.31 laps to move into fourth place overall but Paul with 140.60 moved SCD Roadhogs into second place.. With one run each to go the top six were: - Oakland's 1 (412.18), SCD (409.24), SDS(408.17), Area2 (406.34), L&H(403.22) and Aces Inc 394.09.

Laurel and Hardy were alongside Aces Inc in heat 10 and both of these teams needed a good run to set a target for the other four teams who were all in heat 11.

Laurel and Hardy repeated their fourth run problems of the previous day and a score of 115.82 saw them drop away to eventually finish sixth. For Aces it was a much better run with 136.31 setting the target for those in the last race. I was driving the Oakland's car on Yellow and after a minute had increased our lead by another lap but just after this we again had gear problems. The fault was found to be that the motor had moved (if only we had realised this when the first gear failed). The result was a run of only 117.34 laps, which put Oakland's 0.22 behind Aces. Meanwhile Area2 were making a move and led SDS but not by the 2 laps that they needed. SCD had to keep within 1 lap of SDS but slowly they dropped to 3 laps behind. The final scores of 136.31 for Area2, 135.95 for SDS and 132.45 for SCD meant that SDS took the overall victory by 1.47 laps from Area2 with SCD less than a lap behind Area2. This was another very good race and further justification for using the Falcons motors.

Team	Driver 1	Driver 2
Laurel and Hardy	Ralph Parker	Andy Brown-Searle
Area 2	Mark Croston	Martin Ellis
Dads Taxi	Stephen Siddall	Matthew Siddall
Balterina's	Dave Homer	Martin Jackson
Moraviams	Trevor Tennant	Eddie Grice
Oaklands 1	Chris Thomas	Graham Thomas
SDS	Steve Sargent	David Sargent
Jedi Knights	Paul Hackett-Evans	Alex Hackett-Evans
Aces Inc	Sandy Parker	Stuart Tennant
SCD Roadhogs	Chas Keeling	Paul Shepered
A9 Run	Roddy Morrison	Richard Wallace

Team	Red	White	Blue	Yellow	Total	Points
SDS	135.95	138.61	134.51	135.05	544.12	50
Area 2	138.31	136.31	135.72	132.31	542.65	47
SCD Roadhogs	129.17	140.60	132.45	139.47	541.69	45
Aces Inc	134.56	136.05	133.57	125.96	530.14	43
Oaklands One	139.58	143.29	129.11	117.54	529.52	41
Laurel and Hardy	115.82	131.47	138.03	133.72	519.04	39
Moravians	122.82	131.08	131.53	130.80	516.23	37
A9 Run	128.45	123.72	128.27	126.80	507.24	35
Balterina's	119.39	121.72	118.60	116.39	476.10	33
Dad's Taxi	119.55	116.61	116.73	113.53	466.42	31
Jedi Knights	124.75	120.67	98.08	82.06	425.56	30

I would like to thank everyone for coming to both of the meetings. Particular thanks go to Chas who, although clearly not very well, still ran his shop, marshalled, and raced. I would also like to mention, Andy for bringing his shop, the lads from Scotland for making such a long journey and Dave for helping to run race control and for providing the food on Saturday night. I suppose I should also thank my son Chris for helping me to organise the race sheets and running race control at both meetings.