Thanks to the 17 racers who turned up to race at the meeting. Racing was 2x3min heats with best single run to count into segmented finals with win for any final. Saloon and Sports was 4x3min with F1 only 4x2min to catch up the time, as the 5:30 close.

 

The Saturday practise session was attended by 13 racers and the new track was received well by most though there were a few problems with the tape lifting. Due to problems with the roof leaking the track alterations had been delayed and the track had not been raced on. In fact when Chris and myself arrived late on Saturday afternoon Chris noticed that many cars were not counting laps. Hence a return at 20:00 to lengthen the dead sections. Having lengthened the lap counter section on Red lane the counter still didn’t work. We then tried thicker wires from the track to race control but again this didn’t work. A phone call to Ralph to warn him of the problem resulted in Andy Brown making a late night visit. On Andy’s suggestion we swapped the wires on the dead section over and success, all the lanes now counted! So with less than 10 hours to go before the Sunday’s racing started we had everything working.  Just as well as we had four Sunday arrivals to bring the total to 17 racers, which is the highest so far for the 2007/2008 1/32^nd BOC series.

Saloon.
 Paul Harwood was the top qualifier for Saloon with a best run of 34.88 laps and was to be joined in the A final by Brain, James, and Paul Shepard. These were the only drivers to top 34 laps and the 5^th qualifier Vince was over 2 laps down on these four. David Sargent won the 5 man D final, his total of 124.89 laps giving him 9^th place overall. Fellow Fylde member Martin Ellis then won the C final with 132.13 laps, which was still the top score after the B final. All four A finalists beat his total as expected. Brian and James leading the way with a close tussle finally going in James’s favour by just 29 parts. Paul H was third and Paul S fourth.

F1.
 Brian and Paul H were the only 2 drivers to top 34 laps in the heats. Keith, James and Tony recorded over 33 laps and indeed Tony missed out on the A group by just 2 parts.

 Saloon had taken longer than scheduled so we decided to reduce the f1 groups to 4x2 mins. Once again the first group had 5 drivers. Winner of this group was Martin Ellis using a Falcon motor in the poor mans version of the Merlin and his score would give him ninth place overall. Only Woody and David from the C group improved on Martins run. In the B Group Tony took the victory improving on Woody’s score by over 3 laps and this proved enough to beat A finalist Keith. The other three A finalists would take the top three places. Just as in Saloon Brian and James were close throughout and Brian finally took the victory by just 13 parts of a lap. As in Saloon Paul H took third but this time he was much closer and finished less than a lap behind Brian and was well in contention throughout.

Sports
Having caught up on time we decided to run 3min heats and 3 mins segmented finals. Andy deciding to drop out of sports so we had four groups of 4, which made the race sheet for the heats much easier, also helped this. Brian took top place from the heats with an incredible 40.86 laps in the last heat. This with a low down force body which he his trying out in preparation for the worlds. James and the two Paul’s joined him in the A group. Fifth qualifier was Martin who had decided to abandon Falcon power. Stephen Siddall kept the hunger pains at bay to with the D final with a score that would give him seventh place overall. No one in the C group bettered Stephens run. In the B final Woody set the pace with 38 laps on Red lane and when he followed this up with 40 laps on Blue he established a two-lap lead on Martin. A run of over 41 laps in the last segment set a high target of 158.12 laps. Hence the A group drives needed just over 39.5 laps per lane. In the first leg James was on the pace with 40 on Blue while Brian and Paul H were also on the pace with 39laps. Paul S was struggling on Red lane with 35 laps. Paul H posted another 39 laps in the second leg while James with 38 laps remained on the same lap as Paul. Brian was now a lap down and Paul S was dropping out of contention. Paul H establish a lap lead in the third leg with yet another 39 lap score but was now nearly 2 laps down on Woody’s pace. He then had a bad fourth leg recording 37.50 on Yellow, which not only allowed James with 39 laps to take second overall but was also 25 parts short of reaching Martin for third place.

 The days racing was completed by 17:15. It was nice to finish early and many people commented that they would be able to get home at a reasonable time. Our decision to charge only £10 for the days racing and not present trophies also received favourable comment. Thanks to everyone present not only for coming to race but also for cooperating with our tight racing schedule. As it turned out we didn’t need to finish so early as the dog show in the main hall ran late but we had no way of knowing that would happen.

 

 

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