Dudley - Round 3 - 18th May

 1/32nd Heat Results

One very happy young man replaced the two grumpy old men so we had 23 racers for the individual event at Dudley. The young man in question was Martin Jackson’s younger brother Luke who set a very good score in the first heat with 28.30 laps on Red lane. This was good enough to give him the heat victory by 6 laps from John Gooding with Mathew Green another lap back. Only Charlie Gooding was to better this in the first round of heats and that includes the super production runners! In heat2 a very close race eventually saw Andrew Hogg (23.95) beat Christopher Green by just 1 part. Sandy Parker was again showing good form to win heat 3 by over two laps from Roddy, Dave Homer and her Dad Ralph. Martin Ellis has actually had more club nights at Dudley than at Oakland’s during his time working in the Midlands and put the experience to good use in setting a winning run of 27.02 laps in heat 4 but was still over a lap short of Luke’s score. Heat 5 had the top Falcon runners and Charlie set the new top score with 28.50 laps on Blue lane. Chris Thomas moved into third overall with Martin Jackson fourth overall and Graham Thomas sixth overall. Paul Shepherd once again easily won the production heat by over two laps from Steve with David third. Luke was saving his best car for the final, Matthew green improved by 2 laps to put himself above John Gooding. Matthew Siddall improved by 3 laps in-group 2 but Andrew Hogg still managed to beat him by 2 parts. Sandy won again but was slower than her first run in-group 3 however the other three all improved. Roddy Morrison added 2 laps to his first score and was still ahead of track owner Dave Homer. Everyone improved in-group 4 with the race being won by Martin Ellis on 27.56 laps. The top Falcon group were next with Graham Thomas moving into first place in Falcon with 28.53 laps on Yellow just 3 parts more than Charlie’s first run. Martin Jackson’s score was half a lap better than his first run but still nearly a lap short of his brother. Chris Thomas was even slower than on his first run and was sitting in sixth place and facing missing the A final. All four of the Super production drivers improved on their first runs and David moved above Steve into second place. There were no more improvements in-group 1 but Matthew Siddall improved by over a lap in-group 2 and put himself into the B final. Sandy won group 3 and set her best score, which was just 1 part, more than Matthew Siddall. Dave Homer also added over a lap to his score but still missed out on a place in the B Final. Steve Siddall improved by over a lap in-group 4 but was still a lap short of his sons score. Going into the last Falcon heat Graham Thomas was top Falcon with Charlie second, Luke third and Martin Ellis fourth. Chris Thomas had been suffering with a controller problem after the wiper had fallen off. He borrowed a controller from Dave Homer and set the best run of the day with 29.01 laps on Red lane. Martin Jackson moved up to second in Falcon with 28.55 laps on Blue just 2 parts more than Graham Thomas. This was the second time in two days that Martin had beaten someone by 2 parts. This meant that Martin Ellis dropped to 6^th and most significantly Luke dropped to fifth missing the A final on his BSL debut by just 20 parts to Charlie Gooding.

Finals
In the E final Steve Smith had car problems leaving Matthew Green to beat John Gooding by a lap. Ernest Danyi drove well in the D final to win by a lap from Ralph Parker. Stephen Siddall won a close C final with Dave Homer just 38 parts behind and Andrew Hogg another 4 parts back in third place. In the B final Luke was again quick but suffered a few offs and only finished third. The B final win went to Martin Ellis with Saturday’s joint Falcon winner Sandy taking second place. In the A final Charlie had an off on lap one but quickly passed Martin to get into third place. Chris slowly drove off into a lead of about half a lap, which he maintained, to the end. The battle was for second place with Charlie slowly catching up with Graham who then stayed level for a few laps till he had an off. Graham was well in front of Martin so set off after Charlie and almost caught up before almost losing it and dropping a few feet back again. In the end Charlie took second by just 4 parts, which made up for the previous year when Graham by a very small margin had beaten him by rolling past after the power had gone off. Paul again won the super production final but he was a lap short of the first three in Falcon. David this time took second ahead of Steve.

 1/32nd Finals