2011 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 1
Birmingham Wheels, Saturday 24th July 2010
Heat 1: 199 170 67 742 61 14 192 85 130 278
Heat 2: 72 174 303 116 305 911 115 444 871 31
Heat 3: 14 444 85 911 115 305 871 500 130 271
Heat 4: 199 174 742 170 303 61 482 17 116 155 (278 dq)
Final: 61 303  72(X-2) 174  170 more to follow
Results as seen trackside, with thanks to Team Kew.  To be confirmed.

World Series 2010

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 16
Wood wins to wrap up World Series
Northampton, Sunday June 6th 2010

Graham Brown reports:  Although Lee Wood took a clear win in the final at NIR, it wasn’t enough to gain him that all-important world final place as Round 16 signalled the end of the 2009/10 World Series. The final was a real nail-biter of a race as the destination of the points championship went all the way to the wire, with defending champ Chris Haird overcoming the handicap of an 18-point dropped score to retain his title.

As one might expect at this stage of the game, there was a slightly depleted entry of 30 for this, with quite a number of drivers having now realised that there was no longer anything they could do to affect the outcome of the top 18. Almost certainly, there was also an element of not wanting to either get under the feet of those with everything still to play for or perhaps suffering the consequences if they did.

For those still in with a shout there was absolutely no doubt that this was going to be a crucial day however, with plenty at stake throughout the points table. This was to say nothing of the fact that this was the time when the forfeit of those pesky dropped scores couldn’t be put off any longer.

Colin Smith was the man who’d put in the biggest effort to get to NIR, the team having realised that the BMW wasn’t going to be fit in time after the Ipswich crash. That meant dragging the 206cc out of mothballs and putting it back into commission a bit sharpish. Although I think Colin was disappointed with his results on the day, non-attendance would definitely have been worse.

Most people have noted that the points chase has been very close all season long in terms of just how little there really is between all the front runners. And it has got closer the nearer the end of the series we’ve got. By the time of this last round, only 82 points covered the distance between points leader and the first driver who wouldn’t qualify, while only 54 points separated the top man from the bottom of group three. That’s taking no account of the dropped scores either, with only Smiffy from the top four groups having nowt to be taken off. Obviously, nothing good was going to happen to Matt Simpson as a result of his enforced role as spectator, but even for some of those who were racing, the afternoon wasn’t going to be all happy trails…

Lee Wood’s struggle to get back inside the top 18 was pretty much over before it began when he was forced to non-start in heat one with a flat in the left front. Although he did extremely well the rest of the day, that nil score in heat one was a killer. Chris Harvey got away fast but soon struck problems and slowed into retirement as Dickie Burtenshaw took over at the front. An incident involving James O’Shea and Neil Stimson which saw James spin at turn three was to have consequences for Neil later. Despite his immediate black cross, he wasn’t hanging around though and was locked in a dice for second with Carl Waller-Barrett until he got ahead at half distance.

Waller-Barrett rotated between turns three and four soon afterwards, while Stimson gradually closed the gap between himself and the leader until they were together starting the last lap. Dickie made no mistakes on that lap though and, even if he had, Neil lost a couple of places to the steward anyway, elevating Stu Carter to second and – rather importantly as it turned out – Lee Pepper to third.

Harvey never even got to start heat two, pulling off the grid with a broken gear lever as Ralph Sanders played the hare this time. Mikey Godfrey was another outside the top 18 and desperately looking for points, but things weren’t going that well here as he slipped from third to Stimson, then back to fifth courtesy of Colin Gomm.

As Sanders opened out his lead to around a quarter of a lap, another face off between O’Shea and Stimson came to a clean conclusion this time with Neil going around the outside to set off after the leader. He narrowed the gap quite a bit by the end although Ralph was never in much danger and took a win that really did look like it might count for something. Sterling drives by Haird and Carl Boardley into fourth and fifth also looked like they might have significance at the end of the day, while right in the same bracket but for different reasons came a blown engine and early bath for Willie Hardie.

A sudden shower before heat three caught the entire field on slicks and was definitely a race in which experience was going to count. Few present day drivers have Sanders’ experience to call on and he was soon on his way to win number two once he’d overtaken early leader Wood. Although a dry line did develop very quickly once the race got underway, there was no doubt that the half-and-half conditions played their part in a few incidents. That probably included the one that started when Jason Kew and James Jamieson tangled midway along the home straight and ended with Jason nose in against the wall.

Second man Burtenshaw never gave up chasing Sanders, and was actually catching up too at around mid-distance but, as the track dried still further, Ralph seemed to get the upper hand once more and was well clear at the chequers. Wood got a fighting third in this one, but it was beginning to look as though none of it was going to be enough to get him on the grid at Ipswich.

That’s not to say that he gave up trying and there was certainly nothing more he could have done in the final, which saw Lee record a flag-to-flag victory, although it would be fair to say not too many eyes were on him…

In fact, everywhere you looked there were likely-to-be-vital dices going on. Malcolm Blackman and Haird’s scrap at the back was an obvious one but equally, what Boardley achieved might still be important too. But the absolute man of the hour here was Lee Pepper. Starting from twelfth, he was always going in the right direction. By about half distance he was through to eighth with what looked like a really hard job to get all that much further up the order in his ageing Peugeot 206. Not a bit of it though, as Lee continued to pick people off, almost always round the outside, finally putting a really class move on Harvey and Sanders to do the pair of them in just one bend. This fabulous drive allowed him to claim second and, with the every-point-counts fight to get through the traffic by Haird, Blackman, Boardley and Jamieson, there was never a dull moment.

While Haird shrugged off his big dropped score to run out the winner of this intriguing points struggle, the other main talking points were Pepper’s jump into group one to Jamieson’s stunned disbelief, Sanders’ climb from non-qualifier at the beginning of the day into a possible group two start, and the shock non-qualification of Steve Thompson. Now that, I don’t think anyone could have predicted. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 100,85,155,271(-2),911,6,174(-2),41,95,3,61,199,170,491,27,74.
Heat two: 734,271,74,115,41,278,6,27,305,31,95,3,130,491,519.
Heat three: 734,100,333,278,(130),61,162,155,305,170(-2),911,115,199,174,85,519.
Final: 333,155,503,734,162,27,271,115,278,41,6,130,170,31,911,305,174,100,3,85,61,199,491,74.
271 dropped two places in heat one for contact with 74. 174 dropped two places in heat one for contact with 61. 130 disqualified from heat three for contact with 85. 170 dropped two places in heat three for contact.
Martin Kingston’s photos
Trevor Hill’s photos

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 15
Irish eyes are smiling!
Ipswich, Monday May 31st 2010

Graham Brown reports:  Itinerant Irishman James O’Shea often saves his better performances for Ipswich and Bank Holiday Monday was one of those days, the Dubliner winning a heat by default before making off with the final as well for a much needed double points score at a critical time in world qualifying.

I suppose I could just as well have used that good old standby headline of ‘Just Another Manic Monday’, although the truth is, it wasn’t actually all that manic until we got to the final!

38 cars for this one, still a good entry for this close to the World and with a lot of drivers now certain that they can’t make it onto the grid no matter what they do. The field was swollen by a few interlopers too, not that unusual at this time of the year with drivers looking for track time before the big day. Winnie Holtmanns and Laurens vd Velde had both made the continental trek, while Gary Woolsey showed his commitment by hauling over from NI. ROI racer Shane Murphy had originally booked in but later cancelled, while this meeting was also due to be the debut of Spedeworth 2.0 driver Scott Bourne but as he was a no-show we’ve still yet to see his ex-Longhurst cc in action.

There were still more than enough drivers on hand for the three heat format however, putting plenty of cars out for every race. Despite the swollen grid the opening heat remained incident free throughout. Wayne Lee made a seriously fast getaway from pole to gain an immediate advantage. It wasn’t to last once Skegness winner Steve Burrows got into the groove though, Steve taking over the lead before mid-distance and going on to cross the line first. Unfortunately, Burrows failed a post race weight distribution check, handing the win to O’ Shea – who’d tracked the leader all the way - instead. One feature of this was the excellent dice between Lee and Dickie Burtenshaw for third/fourth, with Dickie going ahead at one point only to have Lee fight back around the outside. The race also marked a serious return to form for Carl Boardley, who put some recent lacklustre results behind him to come through for fifth on the road, fourth in the final reckoning.

Chris Harvey was the early leader in heat two but soon came under pressure from Ray Harris, O’Shea and Andy Lane. Harvey’s car was trailing smoke and looked to be in trouble as he fell back after a successful challenge from Lane and into eventual retirement. Harris had vanished from the leader board after an earlier spin, while Lane (despite a black cross for an exchange of paint with Harvey during their brief fight for the lead) pressed on to win with Colin Smith’s Z4 coming through really well for second.

This was another race where the outcome was going to be affected by events in the scrutineering bay, and it was John Holtby this time that fell foul of the scales. Of course, neither he nor Burrows was allowed to take any further part in the meeting.

Harris was the first to show in the third encounter before another Skegness winner – Burtenshaw – took charge at the front. Burtenshaw had stretched his lead to a yawning quarter of a lap by the finish and ran out a clear winner. Mark you, if there had been more laps, fast moving second placeman Chris Haird would probably have got a lot a closer once he’d broken clear of the pack…

Again, Boardley underscored his renewed pace by going one place better than his first outing to take fourth for real this time. Along the way he pulled off several superb outside passes, notably when overhauled the battling trio of Willie Hardie, Simpson and Jason Kew.

The track was crammed with cars for the final, Lee making another fast getaway to assume the top spot. As in the first heat though, it wasn’t long before he had to defend it, this time against Harvey and O’Shea. O’Shea was looking pretty sharp here, as he took to the outside to demote Harvey and then nipped past Lee as well to hit the front. The couple of laps these passes occupied were probably the best James has driven since making the brave decision to try and qualify in England and, in the final analysis, it was these moves that were to deservedly net him the win. Once ahead, he was never remotely challenged and extended his lead at will until it was over a quarter of a lap.

Behind him though, the crowded track had already led to one or two minor incidents, with Tim Moody and Burtenshaw getting together on the turn four exit (both men fortunately recovering quickly) and Woolsey and Carl Waller-Barrett having a similar problem at the same place with much the same outcome. But worse was to come.

A stiff dice had been going on between Matt Simpson and Boardley, the pair haring through the pack as though tied together. Everywhere Matt went, Carl went too in a battle that slightly recalled the ones that used to take place between Lee, Polley and Collard. Even Haird – who wasn’t hanging about either, believe me – couldn’t delay them for long. Unfortunately, it all ended in tears when the pair touched with Carl going for the outside pass, the 41 car clouting the barriers exiting turn four and then going in a lot harder at the other end of the track, obviously having sustained a flat or worse in the encounter.

There was hardly time to take that in before four cars tried to get into track space really only designed for two or three with disastrous results. Mikey Godfrey got forced into the wall before cannoning off as Smith went spinning, getting collected hard by other cars as he went. With cars (including Simpson’s) strewn across the home straight and up against the wall in turn one, the red flags signalled an early finish.

Just as a footnote to this, you might be interested to know that, during the winter just gone, the ORC ratified a lot of rules relating to previous ‘grey areas’. One result of that is that much the same thing will now happen whether you are watching BriSCA F1’s, Bangers or whatever. One of those grey areas concerned stoppages. Previously, if a result was available from the last completed lap (assuming the lap scorers or transponder computer operators were not caught out by the stoppage) that included the cars caught up in the crash, they might be included in the result (they were still running at that time, remember) at the steward’s discretion, or they might not. Now, the rules say that the result in these instances must be taken from the last completed lap and that the car(s) responsible for the stoppage must be taken out of the result. Here that meant Colin Smith, because he was the one the reds came out for as the steward considered he was the one in danger – note that this does not necessarily mean he (or whoever it might be) actually caused the crash. Note also, that on another day and in different circumstances, all the cars involved in a race stopping shunt might be deemed the cause of the stoppage.

The steward also deemed Matt Simpson to have been at fault in Boardley’s crash and subsequently issued a load up, plus a ban from racing at Northampton in Round 16 and at the Thunder 500. Simpson had stated his intention of lodging an appeal at the time of writing. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: (116),74,99,100,41,115,27,61,31,491,155,278,174,911,170,95,(940),65,(78),305(-2),17,503,33.
Heat two: 130,491,(6),74,305,(303),65,155,734,170,31,72,85,333,162,911,3,(78),(467)
Heat three: 100,115,99,41,333,27,(303),61,130(-2),278,72,95,174,482,(940),162,(467),33.
Final: 74,99,503,27,174,278,130,(303),155,305,911,61,100,170,72,31,95,734,(78),17,33,(467).
116 & 6 both loaded up after failing post-race weight percentage checks. 303 loaded up after incident with 41 in the final. Final stopped on lap 31 with result taken from the last completed lap and verified by video footage as well as the usual lap scoring and transponder data.
*STOP PRESS*
Matt Simpson’s appeal was heard on Friday evening and his penalty reduced to a load up (from Ipswich 31/5) plus a one meeting ban, from Northampton 6/6.


2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 14
Not tricky for Dickie
Skegness, Sunday May 23rd 2010

Graham Brown reports: Seriously hot sunshine greeted the Nationals on the occasion of this year’s outing to Skegness, with every race providing a different winner. Dickie Burtenshaw was the man who waited for the final to take his win, fighting off opposition from Carl Waller-Barrett along the way.

32 cars were on hand for this, not a bad turn out for a meeting so close to the end of world qualifying and at a track which isn’t the most convenient for many of the teams to get to. The sudden summer weather was certainly a far cry from the last time we were there in 2008 (irreconcilable fixture clashes prevented the meeting taking place last year) when Skeggy basked in sunshine and blue skies, if not actually warm sunshine, while almost the rest of the entire country was under snow.

It was welcome back time for Andy Steward who was, almost unbelievably, making his first foray of 2010. However, one driver he wasn’t going to have to face up to for very long was Colin Gomm. Colin, having had his oil filter come undone in practice, was unsure how long his engine had run like that and how much damage he might have done. He wisely decided therefore, that retiring from the meeting as soon as he had his attendance points in the bag was the only sensible option.

The first heat of the day hadn’t gone very far when the battle for the lead between Danny Brosnan and Chris Harvey ended with the pair tangling along the home straight and Harvey going hard into the infield tyre barriers. Harvey’s car nose-dived into the infield and he was fortunate not to roll end over end. Not surprisingly, the incident brought out the yellows and later led to Brosnan being disqualified from the meeting.

Brosnan was allowed to take the re-start however, and clung on at the front for a while despite pressure from Waller-Barrett, Gavin Murray and Stu Carter. As so often, this was going to be a day when anybody who could make the outside line work for them was going to do alright. It was Murray who got out there and stayed that way which, initially, merely served to let Carter through. But Gavin wasn’t deterred and worked his way back past Carter, then Waller-Barrett and finally Brosnan to hit the front. It was a proper bit of hot rodding by Murray who, once in front, was soon off and running , going on to take the win by around a quarter of a lap. Carter and Colin Smith got over the line second and third, but both got dropped places, Carter for contact and Smith for jumping the start, putting Waller-Barrett back into second and Matt Simpson up to third.

As unlikely as it seemed, heat two was to become an even more enthralling battle for the lead that was to last almost the entire race.

Graeme Callender was the first to show, but Steward was in the lead by lap two with Steve Burrows and Burtenshaw hot on his heels. Despite Burtenshaw’s presence, Burrows was every bit as game to try the outside pass as Murray had been earlier, putting the Tigra firmly out wide and staying there. With Burrows permanently outside and Steward – to his credit – giving him all the room he needed, the dice went on and on. Burrows twice got ahead without being able to make it stick. On one of those times, he could have stayed ahead if he had just chopped in that bit harder going into the pit bend, but it looked like Steve had decided that as Andy had played fair with him…

There was still nothing between them coming off the last bend but Burrows made a final desperate lunge that just saw him nick it at the line in a virtual dead heat. A proper race that would have been worth the trip on its own.

The third heat hadn’t quite the entertainment value of the first two although that probably didn’t bother Doughnut, who beat off an early challenge from Burtenshaw to take this one. That’s not to say there weren’t other things going on of course. Burtenshaw, having looked a safe bet to hold onto second till the end, lost out to Mikey Godfrey – who was also having a good day – with just a couple of laps to go, Neil Stimson and Murray going through in his wake.

There was also an incident where Jason Cooper and Sammy Shudall got locked together and slid out to the fence at the pit bend end. Shudall attracted a black flag for the incident, although the disqualification (and the five penalty points that went with it) was later rescinded after a steward’s enquiry revealed that he had been caught up on Cooper’s sill and was merely a passenger from that point on.

Callender headed them away in the final and kept his Colt out front despite pressure from behind in the shape of Burrows, Steward, Burtenshaw, Waller-Barrett and Ralph Sanders. Graeme was still just about hanging on when the yellows flew after Carl Boardley went spinning on the far turn and stopped in a dodgy spot.

The Scot was still holding sway after the re-start but eventually lost out to Steward for a few yards and then Burtenshaw as he darted under both of them at the pit bend.

Steward pulled up shortly afterwards and then Callender faded from the lead bunch, eventually to get tangled with Steve Thompson exiting the fourth turn. Steve managed to limp away from the scene, obviating the need for a caution.

In that lead bunch the real action had been between Burtenshaw and Waller-Barrett for the top slot, the latter looking every bit of a match for the leader to begin with. As the laps counted down though, Burtenshaw gradually got the upper hand and had opened out quite a bit of daylight between them by flag fall.

The outside line man to watch in this was Simpson, who passed a number of cars that way but eventually ran out of time to get any further forward than a hard-won seventh. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 95,162,303,85(-2),491(-2),31,61,6,444,155,170,115,482,174,116,27,17,871.
Heat two: 116,198,734,491,31,100,130,333,911,72,174(-2),305,170,303,41,271,6,871,74.
Heat three: 198,27,271,95,100,305,72,115,74(-2),911,162,155(-2),41.
Final: 100,162,734,27,491,31,303,95,271,72,6,174,911,305,130,155,482,74,17,85.
All penalties for contact except 491 which was a jumped start. 33 was loaded up after heat one.
’Trevor Hills photos

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 13
West Country to the fore in the Midlands
Hednesford, Monday May 3rd 2010

Graham Brown reports:  Despite failing to trouble the scorers much in the heats, the West Country duo of Graham Luscombe and Ralph Sanders came good at the right time to record a sterling one-two in the final. But probably the real victor on the day was the weather, which contrived to produce the absolute worst conditions in which to try and run a hot rod meeting.

A pretty good entry of 37 cars for this one, with numbers still holding up well even as the end of world qualifying approaches. It wasn’t always thus, with entries starting to drop away as people realised they had no hope of making it and just giving up until the start of the next lot of rounds. Nowadays, drivers tend to take the long view that they either need to improve (which means keeping their hand in) before the start of the next series, or get out there now if they aren’t already racing, so that they have their cars sorted before beginning a qualifying run in earnest.

Right into that latter category, I guess, come returnees Tim Moody and Wayne Lee. Both have been missing from the scene for a considerable number of years, although Moody for many more than Lee! Tim’s all-new SLK was painted in a familiar shade of pale green (turquoise?) to anyone who remembers his Stock Rods and looked really good in it too. Tim had drawn the line at applying for the number 238 however!

Wayne, on the other hand, was out in the equally good looking ex-Chris Haird 206cc that we saw in his striking new red colours at the Ipswich test day. It is also sporting some highly effective sign writing into the bargain.

The weather never looked like it was going to be awfully kind, with the odd spit of rain in the run up to start-time and the black clouds looming up all across the Chase threatening to provide more than just nuisance value. And so it proved to be. I said earlier that it contrived to produce the absolute worst conditions in which to try and run a hot rod meeting, but what I should really have said is the worst conditions in which to try and run a hot rod! I haven’t forgotten those days as a mechanic when rain, stop, rain, stop (etc.) leads to nothing but changing tyres (usually for the wrong ones) and chasing the set-up all day. You used to end up using every spring, shock and diff in the lorry and the only race you ever had the car right for was the one you were in last time, only just not at the time you were in it…happy days.

At least our problems these days only revolve around organisational delays caused by teams doing almost all of the above (they don’t often swap diffs on account of track conditions these days) at the last minute as they try to second guess the weather. And speaking of which…

….it was already spitting a good deal more heavily than it had been earlier as they lined up for the first heat. This was ill-starred from the get-go, with Ralph Sanders failing to move at all at the green flag. Luckily he had staggered away by the time the pack came around for the first time but it was a bad omen.

Danny Brosnan and Graeme Callender diced for the lead, with the Scot running a wide outside line that seemed to work reasonably well for him as the rain intensified. It wasn’t good enough to stop Graeme falling down the order though, as Steve Burrows forged to the front.

Steve was still there when Dickie Burtenshaw and Callender had a bit of a coming together along the back straight, with the 100 car slowing to a halt up on the West bend before limping a bit further to stop in a very dodgy spot by the pit gate. That brought out the yellows, followed by a swift re-start at which Brosnan got disqualified for zapping past race leader Burrows well before the green came out. When Neil Stimson rotated at the start/finish more yellows flew and while they were trying to get in the right order to go again, the pesky rain suddenly turned into a heavy shower of sleet and hail that bounced all over the track!

That put an end to matters right there with all the cars on slicks, and the race was originally called at that point. However, with nowhere near enough laps completed (by the rule book) it wasn’t long before the decision was taken to re-run the entire race later in the programme.  There is no truth to the rumour that it was all a plot by certain NHRPA officials to get four heats whatever the promoter thinks!

The track was merely wet, and the sun now out for the re-run, but even this was interrupted before long (Callender leading) by a multi-car shunt on the slippery track. Brosnan had a spin exiting the East bend and got tagged by Burrows who also spun before getting T-boned seriously hard by Colin Smith. With Gavin Murray and Jason Kew also managing to get involved, a caution was a must here.

When proceedings did finally get underway Colin Gomm went spinning, and Mikey Godfrey not long afterwards, while Stimson was soon past Callender and into the lead, extending it to around half a lap by the finish. Unfortunately, his method of getting to the front hadn’t pleased the steward, a two place penalty handing the win to Steve Thompson. Thompson had come on really strong in the latter part of the race and looked easily the fastest car on the track in any case.

The showery weather and more yellow flags continued to upset the smooth running of things in heat two. The track started out half-and-half, so guessing games about tyres were still the order of the day. Callender had yet another go at leading before losing out to Ray Harris and the Audi. Harris had subsequently been forced to turn over the front spot to Jason Cooper shortly before Carl Waller-Barrett threw a door skin on the track, bringing out the yellows.

Harris pulled out of second place and into retirement during the stoppage, with Burtenshaw joining him on the infield after what looked like a second diff failure. Stimson had inherited second from Harris, but he too was gone as soon as the green came out, leaving Andy Lane, Malcolm Blackman, Carl Boardley, James O’Shea, Luscombe and Mike Loosemore to commence a big places fight.

Blackman soon shrugged this mob off and it eventually came down to a fight for the lead between Cooper and Blackman. Malcolm got over the line first but, like Stimson in heat one, was another to cop a penalty, handing Cooper the win.

Incidentally, not long before the finish, Luscombe smacked the wall on the back straight and as a result, was also throwing doors about. His took a rather less amiable path than Waller-Barrett’s, sailing high over the catch fencing and I was minded of a similar incident at the same spot about 30 years earlier when Paul Grimer launched an Escort bonnet (really just a flat sheet of fibreglass but with very sharp edges) into the crowd like a Frisbee. I don’t remember it hitting anyone and fortunately, on this day, Luscombe’s errant panel only managed to cause injury to somebody’s chair by all accounts.

Another downpour greeted the third heat runners but not until they’d already taken their tyre gamble, naturally. The race proved to be something of a lottery too, with first Danny Brosnan, then Graham Luscombe and Mark Willis all taking turns in the lead. It was an absolutely storming drive from Thompson that got him the victory though, Steve surely having gone for wets all round by the hugely superior pace he was showing. It must be said though, if any of his usual sparring partners were also on four wets, that only makes his drive all the more remarkable. And to underline just how critical this guessing game was of whether to go for slicks, two-and-two or wets, Matt Simpson – normally the benchmark by which all others are judged in the rain – got lapped. Needless to say, he was not on four of the treaded variety!

The weather finally played ball for the final which was run in the dry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this threw up a completely different set of drivers who’d guessed right about set-up and tyres, with Graeme Callender heading the early laps before Luscombe got through to take it up.

Although never able to extend his advantage by much, when Luscombe lapped Thompson for the second time the writing was on the wall. I certainly clocked two wets on the left side of the 170 car as he lined up which would explain a lot and, of course, if he’d plumped for four it would have been no wonder he was struggling this time.

There were a number of retirements here, including Andy Holtby who headed for the infield with smoke or steam pouring from the front wheel arches in a fair imitation of a thoroughly blown engine, but I never got to ask him and hope I might be wrong about that.

A big effort in the dying seconds got Sanders almost within striking distance of his fellow west countryman but it was all too little too late by then, with Carl Waller-Barrett – another who got nothing out of the heats – a solid third.

I chanced to look at some other results on the ‘net after Monday and discovered that, quite by chance, the winner of the F2 final at Bristol on the same day and at about the same time, was Dave Luscombe! So a good day all round for the Luscombe clan then, which was just as well in Graham’s case as he and his better half are expecting a happy event so he won’t be racing for a while now. It must be something in the water; there’s a lot of it about (the expecting of happy events that is) in National Hot Rod circles at the moment! Graham Brown.
Results
Heat one: 170,61,271(-2),911,65,41,482,305,6,278,85,14,333,871,99.
Heat two: 482,74,911(-2),31,130,115,303,6,41,72,333,155,162,---,---,219(-2).
Heat three: 170,305,65,278,115,95,174,72,742,303,155,162,130,99,33.
Final: 742,734,162,482,305,303,174,333,41,871,130,27,115,911,155,85,170,99.
Martin Kingston & Trevor Hill’s photos in the GALLERY
Also, Steve Weston’s photos on these links:
http://spwpiks.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album65
http://spwpiks.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album66
http://spwpiks.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album68

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 12
Harvey holds on
Aldershot, Sunday April 18th 2010

Graham Brown reports:  Chris Harvey managed to hold off race-long pressure from double heat winner Dickie Burtenshaw to claim the final honours when the National Hot Rods made their annual pilgrimage to the Rushmoor Arena track. As had been expected, it was a day of frustration for many of the rear-of-grid starters, with forward progress difficult around the tight Aldershot track and any attempts to force the issue both easy to see and frequently penalised.

Not everybody was keen to take on the walled-in oval and that, plus the enforced absence of Carl Boardley and bull-ring track specialist Jeff Simpson (Matt Simpson had seen his protest against his Ipswich penalty upheld during the week and was therefore able to race) meant there was a slight dip in numbers for this. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, given both the circuit and the rather more stringent upper limit on the number of starters allowed for the final. Nevertheless, 32 cars were still more than enough for an afternoon’s entertainment in the warm sunshine.

We should just mention that Mark Fuller was debuting his very smart Merc SLK, the car replacing the budget build Saxo he’d extracted some good results out of last year.

OK, so we all knew that overtaking was always going to be difficult, but Danny Brosnan’s spin in the warm ups suggested that grip might be at even more of a premium than passing manoeuvres.

However, it was still Brosnan who headed them away for the first bout and stayed out front for much of the race despite a couple of rather wide moments rounding the pit bend. In the end, it was one such that was his undoing, tempting James O’Shea (who’d made heroic efforts to even get to the meeting from his Dublin base) into a challenge that sent the leader spinning. The move got O’Shea the lead but a black cross to go with it and, added to another earlier on for his suspected part in an early start line spin for Harvey, it looked most unlikely he was going to keep the win even if he got over the line first.

He didn’t in any case, with Andy Lane having forged to the front on the final lap after a long battle with O’Shea, during which Lane too had collected the dreaded cross. In fact, all of the first three home collected penalties, handing the win to a somewhat surprised Andy Holtby who was actually fourth over the line. Sixth man Gavin Murray was probably even more surprised to gain second after all the penalties were taken into account.

There were something like 22 black crosses issued throughout the afternoon, so I’ve only bothered to mention the ones that were acted upon where relevant, or you can see them in the results section.

Heats two and three fell to Dickie Burtenshaw, although third looked to be as far as he was going in the second encounter. Harvey had been in the lead all the way up to the last lap when a final attack from Steve Burrows saw Harvey go spinning, the inevitable penalty giving Burtenshaw the win instead.

In heat three, Brosnan took the early lead, but soon lost out to Burtenshaw when Danny went wide exiting the tricky pit bend and right where the camber of the track falls away. Burtenshaw went on to win by more conventional methods this time, with Sammy Shudall driving well as he managed to wrest second away from Lee Wood by flag fall.

The final took a couple of tries to get going properly. At the first attempt, Stu Carter had what sounded like a transmission blow up on the first lap that left him stuck in a dangerous spot and brought out the waved yellows. They’d not been back underway for long (Harvey leading) when a far turn spin by Ralph Sanders into some following cars brought them all up under yellows again.

By this stage, Ralph, Andy Holtby, Graham Luscombe and Murray were all parked up on the infield, as the rest set off again.

Once battle commenced in earnest, it turned into a lead dice that lasted the entire race between Harvey and Burtenshaw with the outcome balanced on a knife edge. Harvey always looked capable of holding on while Burtenshaw was never more an inch or so from the leader’s bumper.

There were a lot of black crosses being bandied about as the dicing in the pack became more and more heated, the frustration of having no real outside line clearly beginning to tell.

Their fight carried the two leaders half a lap clear eventually but, try as he might, Burtenshaw was never able to quite gain position to take the lead away and Harvey took a well won victory to round off the day. Lee Pepper, Malcolm Blackman and Steve Thompson all did well to fight their way into the top six here, the trio not only managing to get through but without getting penalised either. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 61,95,130(-2),74(-2),72(-2),170,278(-2),115,85,911,491,482,65,333,444,33.
Heat two: 100,734,116(-2),130,503,491,95,155,31(-2),271,115,278,72,911,303,6,27,780,174,14.
Heat three: 100,444,333,74,271,155,61,742,31(-2),6,305(-2),174,85,27,482,---,---,303(-2).
Final: 503,100,74,155,911,170,72(-2),115,278,174(-2),333,482,---,271(-2),130(-2).  All two place penalties for contact.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 11 First timers delight Ipswich, Monday April 5th 2010 Graham Brown reports:  Ipswich on Bank Holiday Monday was almost all about first time winners, with all three heats falling to chequered flag strangers and one of them, Carl Waller-Barrett, made off with the final as well. I say ‘almost all’, because there were some shenanigans both during and after the meeting that were to have further ramifications for some drivers… Thirty seven cars for this manic Monday affair, with our two continental visitors still in the mix and everybody in the cars you would expect, although Frank West was out for his first run in his new-old stock Audi TT that he’s had for six years but never previously got around to racing. Frank had his “life ban” for turning round and racing the wrong way round the track at Wimbledon dropped some years ago when he had already served at least 10 years of it, although by my reckoning it is more like 20 since he last raced in any case. None of this stopped a certain smart-ar*e Racing Director with a long memory from plonking a one-way arrow road sign on Frank’s bonnet as he drove out for his first race though! Practice soon pointed up the fact that the track was very dirty and dusty, although this was not due to any slacking on the part of those responsible for trying to get it clean. In fact, big efforts had been made (and continued to be made throughout the meeting) to shift the stuff, but a combination of an amount of dust left on the track by wintertime construction work, speedway, and rain at the wrong time had all conspired against us. The first victim of the surface was Danny Brosnan, who looped his car and then got clipped by the following Neil Stimson, the impact doing a power of no good to Danny’s left front corner. Fortunately, he was able to get the car repaired in time to take part in the meeting. Largely due to the aforementioned dust, the first heat was something of a scrappy affair. Brosnan and Tony Moss disputed the lead until they tangled exiting turn four with Brosnan spinning wildly across the speedway track as a result. I probably should say here, that I know this only by what I was told afterwards by those in the ‘box, as it was the first of several controversial moments where I happened to be looking anywhere but in the right direction. As DW (and Paul Gerrard) says, we all have days like that, and this was one of mine. So, however much I might like to give you a blow-by-blow account of what happened in every on-track incident, the only one I saw dead on all day was nothing to do with Boardley/Simpson or Simpson/Boardley, and was also seen by everyone else stewarding or spotting anyway! Oh well… Brosnan’s demise saw him later rejoin the track (accidentally or otherwise) just as Moss was coming along, causing Tony to check up and nearly planting Dickie Burtenshaw in the fence as he was trying to overtake Moss at the time. All of that handed the lead to Mikey Godfrey but, with a twelve car train soon forming up behind him, he was still under considerable pressure particularly from Chris Harvey and Jason Cooper. There was absolutely no outside line, but one mistake by Mikey was still going to be enough to give this away if he wasn’t careful. But he was very careful to keep things tidy, and was eventually rewarded when the battle for second saw Harvey and Cooper lock together briefly at the far turn, with the former half spinning as a result. By the time they’d sorted themselves out, Godfrey was well clear and on his way to his first ever win to, as Brian Oliver put it, ‘get that monkey off his back’. Cooper, who it has to be said is looking quite at home already in his new discipline, was all set to collect second right up to the final bend, when a sudden tyre deflation sent him half spinning into Mark Willis. Lee Pepper took the chance to nip by for second with Willis surviving the collision to claim third with the battered Cooper fourth over the line. With a slightly cleaner track heat two was a better race. Brosnan again led initially as fellow front row starter Ray Harris dropped back to fifth, with Burtenshaw, Steve Burrows and Pepper all moving to the fore. Burrows, Pepper and Harris all found a way past Burtenshaw, and then Burrows went wide at the far turn, letting Pepper and Harris through. All of them then closed up to Brosnan and with the first four all running in very close company, Pepper went for an outside pass just as Harris tried it down the inside, the Audi emerging from the three wide clinch with the lead. This intense dicing had allowed much of the rest of the pack to catch up and at one point the first 15 cars were all in a single bunch! Needless to say, this led to a great deal of in-fighting, with Burrows, Colin Gomm and Neil Stimson (both of whom looked to have no chance of getting through earlier on) piling the pressure on the leader. Gomm wormed his way past Burrows with just over two laps to go and shortly before Steve unfortunately went spinning as they crossed the start/finish. All in all, this was probably the best race of the day and one Harris did well to win, as it’s not often a front row starter who falls that far back, ever manages to get back in contention, never mind win. It had become a one line track for the third heat which gave rise to some fairly processional stuff - not that Carl Waller Barrett was complaining. The former Stock Rod racer proved that he now has his head around rear wheel drive by taking a flag-to-flag victory, at the same time becoming the third first time winner of the day. Along the way, Matt Simpson had a spin early on (which may or may not have been something to do with Boardley, the steward thought not), the rejoined (and a lap down) 303 car spurring Waller-Barrett on to go faster and faster in an effort to stay ahead of him! Also along the way, we lost Malcolm Blackman to his second retirement of the day as he lost his second head gasket of the afternoon. Harris got another good position in this with a second to go with his win, while Moss got home third. The track looked mighty crowded for the final and the full 32 car grid was always going to make life difficult for those starting near the back. Waller-Barrett leapt away at the green, clearly with every intention of repeating his heat three result. Although he worked hard at trying to extend his advantage, he never got all that far ahead of his pursuers, chiefly Moss and Pepper. Moss’ second place wasn’t in any danger for a long time either, but as the laps wound down, Pepper closed in to begin a dice that livened up the closing stages. Pepper tried outside and inside passes before the pair finally locked together down the back straight, crossing the line still in the same order. The steward decreed otherwise however, Moss losing a couple of places for chopping off Pepper’s final passing attempt, all of which allowed the leader to make his edge a quarter of a lap by flag fall. Something like seven laps in was when Jeff Simpson and Carl Boardley clattered the fence together going into turn one, although both cars drove away from the incident, Boardley to retire soon afterwards, Jeff pulling off several laps later. Without the benefit of video, I would have had no idea how they crashed and even after seeing some of it, I wasn’t much wiser. So much for that old adage about oval racing being where all of the people see all of the racing all of the time. Yeah, right. Graham Brown Results Heat one: 27,155,65,482,6,115,95,170,503,85,41,444,72,130,31,162,278,( 467),100,33. Heat two: 224,278,271,155,14,61,31,(3),491,303,170,6,95,33,444,(66),74, 734. Heat three: 162,224,192,116,333,27,482,14,271,72,491,41,174,(3),305,61,1 15,65,130,(66),303,734. Final: 162,155,116,192(-2),14,333,72,27,278,174,115(-2),6,482,170,3 1,305,303,85,65,444 192 disqualified from heat one for contact with 33, causing 33 to spin. 192 dropped two places for contact with 155 in final. 115 dropped two places for contact in final. 3 subsequently ‘loaded up’ from meeting following a steward’s enquiry.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 10
Rain fails to stop play
Northampton, Friday April 2nd 2010

Graham Brown reports:  Despite the weather making conditions less than ideal at Autospeed’s annual Good Friday Northampton bash, it failed to prevent some good racing at NIR. A pretty substantial entry of 38 cars was spread over four heats, with every race falling to a different winner before Nationals newcomer Mike Loosemore became the first double victor of the day in the hard fought final.

On the entry front, Danny Brosnan’s car had acquired some new signs since we last saw it, as indeed had John Holtby’s Merc, with John clearly having made an effort not to be outdone by his brother in the flamboyant stakes! There were welcome visitors among the ranks too, with Winnie Holtmanns and John vd Bosch both trekking from continental Europe to make their 2010 debuts.

The predicted rain, which had started during practice, was unfortunately to persist throughout the heat races.

Ray Harris and then Mikey Godfrey both took turns at leading the first before Dickie Burtenshaw spun into the wall at turn three, bringing out the yellows. With the field naturally closed up by this, it didn’t take long after the resumption for Godfrey to lose out to Jason Cooper, the Superstox star obviously revelling in the slippy-slidey stuff, as he was even sideways on the straights at times with no sign of much backing off! He was slowed by having to deal with backmarkers near the end, allowing the fast finishing John Holtby to shut down Cooper’s quarter lap lead somewhat, but it was always going to be too little too late.

In the second race, Loosemore got out front initially before Jason Kew got through down the outside exiting turn four. There followed another caution period for ‘debris on the course’ when Andy Lane lost his left side door panel on the back stretch. The hiatus made no odds to the leader, but enabled quite a battle to develop for second, with the door-less Lane, Mark Willis and Jeff Simpson all involved. Willis copped a black cross during the dice, but kept trying the outside all the way to the finish without managing to make it past. This battle did allow Kew to open up a much more substantial lead by flag fall however.

The track was almost awash for heat three, which seemed to suit Loosemore better, even if his car did seem to be making strange noises at times. Lee Wood ran second until he pulled up, leaving the spot to Willis for a time. But Mark too, seemed to be in trouble, and Kew, Steve Thompson and Colin Smith all went by in due course. Kew was looking really sharp here as, having dealt with Willis, he also fended off an insistent Thompson and managed to close down the leader significantly by the end. Loosemore always looked pretty safe in the closing stages though, and probably used his Outlaw experience to ensure he went just fast enough to keep Jason at arm’s length.

Godfrey had another stab at leading in the last qualifier and at first, seemed likely to fall victim to Cooper’s press-on style before anyone else got there. But Cooper’s car seemed even looser than it had been earlier, Jason being passed by Neil Stimson’s still new Tigra ‘B’ as he headed the car for its first win. Godfrey had faded to fifth by the finish as Matt Simpson stormed through to second at the death, Matt once again living up to his ‘Slippery’ nickname.

By total contrast the sun was beating down for the final, the drying oval (the preceding F2’s had made a really good start on creating a one-line track) making tyre choice and set up something of a lottery.

Loosemore swiftly opened out a useful lead and underscored his relative pace by lapping Carl Boardley before too long.

But the leader was not going to get this all his own way, especially when Chris Harvey and James Jamieson tangled and brought out the yellows. This could be viewed a couple of ways. OK, so with Jamieson out of it (having clouted the barriers) and Harvey relegated to the back of the field, perhaps we were robbed of what might have been an even bigger lead dice. But on the other hand, had they not caused the yellow that closed up the front runners, maybe we wouldn’t have had such a good race over the remaining ten laps.

Whatever, the caution naturally enabled the rest to close in, setting up a tremendous fight to the finish between Loosemore, Kew, Jeff Simpson and Stu Carter. Kew tried everything to get around the outside (where his car had been working well all day), while Simpson might have been boxed in most of the time, but kept looking for a way through down by the kerb, where his car had been working well all day! There really was nothing in it between any of them but, despite being under immense pressure, the leader never wavered and impressively clung on at the front all the way to the chequers. Graham Brown.
Results
Heat one: 482,6,305,27,95,(170),303,61,31,271,333,115 ,278,734,(66),224,503.
Heat two: 174,130,65,3,911,85,491,780,155,72,14,219,1 16,41,74,742.
Heat three: 780,174,170,491,85,305,65,911,41,95,6,61,15 5,116.
Heat four: 271,303,482,3,27,130,503,72,278,31,14,444,1 15,219,(66),742.
Final: 780,174,3,85,72,911,170(-2),303,6,(467),503, 333,482,95,31,27,155,130,116,41,491.
170 disqualified from heat one for contact with 115, causing 115 to spin. 170 dropped two places for jumping restart in final.


2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 9
Wilcox rustles up a hat trick
Northampton, Sunday March 14th 2010

Graham Brown reports:  A winter-time switch to a Tigra provided all the impetus Russell Wilcox needed at NIR to put him bang on the pace as the National Hot Rods hit the World Series trail once more. The Market Drayton racer won the first race of the ‘second half’ – just as he did last year, albeit at a different track – and went on to dominate the meeting, eventually going away with a hat trick of victories.

Despite a couple of cancellations there were still 35 cars on hand for the opening event of 2010, just about the right number for a three heat meeting, although some of those starting near the back for the final might have had a different opinion!

Plenty of new cars, drivers and driver/car combinations on show of course, actually the most I can recall for some years now.

In no particular order, we had Mr Wilcox himself in a new (to him) Ludlow Tigra, a similar route having now been adopted by Steve Burrows, both drivers having been previously Peugeot 206 mounted. After many years away from Nationals, Danny Brosnan was back for another go, having forsaken his 147 number of days gone by, in order to put a large 33 on the side of his ex-Graeme Gordon Tigra. Going the other way (so to speak!), from Tigra to Mercedes, was Stuart Carter, the team having switched from their familiar ex-Thompson Vauxhall to the SLK previously driven by Darron Lewis.

Mikey Godfrey had traded up from his elderly Saxo to a spanking new Haird Tigra B, Gavin Murray having done likewise, moving on from a cc in his case. No surprise to see Chris Haird himself in one of these cars either, of course.

Former Spedeworth 2.0 driver (and former owner of the unique Corrado) Chris Harvey was out for his first National meeting at the wheel of the ex-Andy Murray 206cc, the two having traded cars during the winter. Perhaps the highest profile newbie was Jason Cooper, the former two-time Superstox world champ having acquired the remains of Davy McCall’s 2002 world winning Peugeot, now substantially rebuilt as a cc and looking absolutely superb in its met blue livery. Mark you, with those wheels on the car, nobody is likely to forget its origins in a hurry!

Despite not having raced for a while, Mike Loosemore was making the welcome change from driving Outlaws to Nationals, the south westerner being another to switch from a Peugeot to a Ludlow Tigra.

Then there were several cars which had morphed into something else over the winter months. Ralph Sanders seems to have bucked the trend (hardly the first time) by apparently turning his Tigra into a cc. I say “apparently” because it’s only what I heard and I must confess to not having asked him about this - it could be the original cc rebuilt for all I know. It certainly had an outlandish and totally unique rear wing though!

Dickie Burtenshaw had spent his winter turning his Colt into a Tigra (as we saw at the Ipswich test session), a job which apparently turned out to be anything but easy. Whether it generated as much bad language as Team Stimson’s conversion of their Fiesta into a Tigra B is probably debatable however! According to Trevor Stimson, this was particularly true whenever he banged his head on the bulkhead or dashboard, which was often. Nonetheless, their efforts had produced a really nice looking car, the predominantly silver paintwork really suiting the new shape. Unfortunately, the new car repaid all their hard work by developing a monster oil leak in practice. This led to a good deal of work underneath and, no doubt, even more blue air…

There might have been some of that expended around Jason Kew’s Merc too, as it succumbed to engine problems and got further than heat one.

In actual fact, when it got underway, the racing was not that scintillating. Well, not unless you’re a Russell Wilcox fan, anyway! Indeed, after leaping away into the lead at the start of the first heat he was never headed all afternoon. Some hard work early on got him a quarter of a lap advantage before too long.

Chasing but not getting any closer were Burtenshaw and Andy Lane, but the latter was struggling with a gearbox oil leak and the smell of burning gear oil filled the air as the smoke from his car worsened.  He got by Burtenshaw and was still keeping the hard pressing Colin Smith at bay until three laps from home, when he was shown the new red and white flag* and had to pull off. This left Smith to cut Wilcox’s lead somewhat by the finish, although this was mainly due to Russell finding some uncooperative traffic, and Colin still never got within a quarter of a lap.

Heat two was something of a replay for Wilcox, who followed much the same game plan; get out front early and build as much lead as possible without waiting around to see who came after him. That said, this was probably still the best race of the day for connoisseurs of hot rodding providing they were watching Carl Boardley.

With Wilcox romping away out front, it was Lee Wood who held down second some way ahead of Sanders, Smith, Stimson, Lee Pepper and a whole host of others. There was some proper racing going on right the way through the field in fact and, to be honest, it didn’t look like anybody was going to be coming through from the back of this lot; not so.

Boardley somehow made his way through to tenth spot at around half distance and, from that point, just relentlessly kept going forwards. Mind you, he wasn’t the only one as Smith was always going in the right direction too, Colin taking to the outside to demote Sanders before doing the same to Wood a few tours later.

But Boardley was still the man to watch as he worked his way past Colin Gomm, Pepper, Haird, Jamieson and Carter. That put the 41 in fifth but running out of time now, with less than four laps to go. He was still quick to follow Sanders past Wood though, and then blasted by Ralph leaving the pit bend to snatch third at flag fall. That then became second, because Smiffy copped a penalty for some contact along the way. Wilcox was no doubt blissfully unaware of any of this though, carrying another quarter lap advantage till the end.

Wilcox sitting out the third race gave somebody else a shot at glory. Godfrey and Burrows both took turns in the lead, but it looked for a long time as though the likely winner was going to be Stimson. His oil leak cured, Neil was going well in this, working hard to keep Jamieson off and find a way past Lane and Burrows to hit the front. However, he’d never really managed to get rid of JJ, the fast moving Jamieson sticking close before taking the outside line and the lead exiting turn four.

With the premier places settled, Haird also came through really well to take third, with Boardley not quite as electric in this but still a very solid fourth after a long fight to overtake Steve Thompson.

The final was much the same story for Wilcox, who quickly shook off the attentions of Dickie Burtenshaw to build a substantial lead. He stretched it to a quarter of a lap and then a full half circuit, before catching up with the main pack and having to wade through backmarkers slowed him down a bit.

The chasing trio of Sammy Shudall, Andy Lane and Stu Carter still never got anywhere within striking distance by the finish, these three crossing the line almost as one.

The crowded track made it hard for the regular front runners to make much of an impression here. That’s not to say they weren’t trying, but it was very tough to make any headway in this one, and with Boardley eventually struggling through to eighth, Matt Simpson tenth, and even English champ Chris Haird and Malcolm Blackman nowhere near the top ten, you can see what I mean by ‘tough’.

I will just round off by commenting that I’ve been saying for years it would be good to see what Russ Wilcox could achieve in a better car, and now we know. It’s quite nice to be proved right once in a while, although Russ will know as well as anyone that the real test will come when his improved average kicks in!  Graham Brown.
* Red & white flag introduced for 2010 (all formulas) means ‘pull off, you have a mechanical fault’, as distinct from a black flag which may have other connotations.
Heat 1: 219,491,6,31,174,85,444,61,170,100,65,14,333,27,911,95,734,33,72,503,67.
Heat 2: 219,41,734,491(-2),333,305,85,115,31,303,155,3,278,911,482,65,116,162,780,33.
Heat 3: 305,271,115,41,6,444,170,116,278,155,303,14,61,503,482,100,72,27,3,162,67
Final: (typo-amended 23/03) 219,444,130,85,14,491,305,41,734,303,333,278,31,115,3,170,72,911,61,503,100,65,162,780,33.
(33 Danny Brosnan, 162 Carl Waller-Barrett, 482 Jason Cooper, 503 Chris Harvey, 780 Mike Loosemore)

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 8 Stimson shocks himself! Northampton, Sunday November 1st 2009 Graham Brown reports:  There were 33 starters for NIR the following day, a day that started out looking like we were all going to get a serious soaking at the final outing of 2009. A howling wind driving lashing sideways rain (in the midlands at least) must surely have put off many a casual spectator from starting the journey to Brafield. We even joked that, since we would know all the spectators by name anyway, maybe we should invite them all to watch from race control so they could stay dry! It didn’t quite come to that, not least because our arrival at Northampton coincided with the rain suddenly giving up and the sun coming out right on cue. Allied to a still brisk wind, even practice miraculously took place on a dry track. We’d lost Wilcox and Pullen (who had the flu and probably shouldn’t have been racing at Birmingham anyway), while Lewis was a no-show and Harris arrived in the pits but elected not to race for some odd reason. Gavin Murray and Steve Thompson were allowed out to play once more and so re-joined the fold, with Alan White attempting to do so but without ever actually getting a race in. This was to be another four heat meeting, with Callender heading the first of them away on what looked like it might still be something of a slippery track, with several spinners in the opening laps. One of these was a rare rotation for Boardley, another being Wood (who’s crew must have had a sleepless night to get him there at all, as he’d suffered quite a bit of damage in his encounter with the wall at Brum), for which Andy Lane got into trouble later. Lane still managed to get into the lead but was immediately being hassled by Murray and Matt Simpson. With the trio threading through traffic all the way, there was no guessing how this was going to go. Murray went for an outside pass of Lane, but only let Simpson through down the inside instead. Gavin was game for another go though and, with five laps to run, drove around Simpson and Lane going through the pit bend. Gomm was right in with this bunch as well at the end and managed to slip through and into second by flag fall. Lane got disqualified for the Wood incident as well as another somewhere along the way, leaving Simpson third and Willis fourth. Not a bad opener then, but the track was definitely still in a tricky mood, as Sanders demonstrated by spinning in the warm ups for heat two! Richard Smith was the early leader here but with Burrows, Stimson, Mikey Godfrey and Hillard all queuing up behind. Stimson took Burrows down the outside through the pit bend, and then repeated the exercise on Smith at the same place on the following lap. As Neil pulled clear, a bit of a shake up behind him saw Hillard and Andy Holtby start a dice over second with the passing of half distance. Holtby swarmed all over the back of the #31 but was clearly being blocked from making any headway down the outside until the steward lost patience and issued a black cross. Dick let Andy through after that, but with only four to go and Stimson well away in the lead, he was never going to be caught. And that was despite his discovery of a bent and clearly below par shocker after the race. With the car going so well, the team did apparently debate leaving well alone, but finally decided to change the offending damper. It cost them a race in order to do it though. David Brooks was the one who spun in the warm ups for heat three, where Callender had another go at leading. It was only a brief go though, with Murray, Burrows, Burtenshaw, Gomm and Sammy Shudall all jockeying for position close behind. Callender got out of shape exiting the pit bend and went off, as did Shudall, Murray emerging from the clinch with the lead. Burrows, Hillard and Andy Holtby settled into the places, with Phil Spinks next up, followed by an entertaining nip-and-tuck dice between Matt Simpson and Boardley. Hillard and Holtby both relegated Burrows, Steve losing out to Gomm, Simpson and Boardley soon afterwards. They were all really arguing about who was going to be second though, because Murray had cleared off to the tune of a quarter of a lap by this point. Holtby got under Hillard through the far bend to claim second, Boardley took Gomm, and then Simpson and Boardley both went past Hillard down the outside. With five to go Holtby was at last closing down Murray’s lead, but it was too little and far too late to effect the outcome, Gavin netting his second victory of the afternoon. Richard Smith made a demon start to the last heat, but got into the first turn way too fast as a result, allowing Wood through to the front. But it was Lane who really looked the part here, Andy quickly overhauling Smith and Wood to take it up. Wood put up a spirited defence of second against James O’Shea for many laps but, as the halfway mark came and went, the Irishman found a way through. Once again, he was never going to be able to do anything about the leader in the remaining laps, Lane running out the winner by a quarter of a circuit. A crowded final grid provided at least a possibility of the Nationals ending their season on a race peppered with stoppages. A hard but fair encounter ensued however, with not a yellow flag in sight. It was Andy Holtby’s turn to spin in the warm ups this time, before Wood, Godfrey, Lane, Stimson and Murray roared away at the front of the last race of the year. Wood held on well for a few laps, but once Stimson had taken Godfrey, it wasn’t long before he had the red Fiesta out front. It didn’t look like it was ever actually going to be an easy win mind you, with previous winners Lane and Murray soon tracking him. So, although Neil had pretty quickly worked his way to the front, he had to work much harder to stay there. This became especially true as some awkward traffic was always going to make his life difficult. A positively huge bunch had formed up at the rear of the field, where the big names of the sport were fully engaged in battling with each other and making very little headway as a result. This also meant that they weren’t too fussed about any blue flags being bandied about, and Stimson had to use his head rather than his right foot to make some holes, pick a way through them and generally stay out of trouble. Experience definitely counted here, and Neil needed to bring it all to bear as Lane, Murray and Dick Hillard never gave up the chase either. In fact, Hillard’s assault on Murray’s third spot as the laps dwindled away, was the highlight of the race. He’d made several attempts up the outside without ever looking as though it was going to get the job done. It looked even less likely when his best shot at it yet seemed destined to failure, the back marking Laurens van der Velde looming up ahead and most definitely trying to stay out of the way on the outside. But somehow Dick got alongside Murray and managed to slip between him and the blue Tigra to complete the pass of the day going down the back straight It had, in fact, been a pretty good day and a pretty good final with which round things off for 2009. All the way through, I’d half expected some kind of war to break out between the guys being frustrated at the back and yet, to their credit, they all resisted the temptation. Here’s to more of the same in 2010!  Graham Brown Results Heat one: 95,278,(130),303,65,14,41,155,911,871,6,72,100,491, 333. Heat two: 271,61,115,85,31(-2),170(-2),305(-2),67,116,174,74, 444,27,(78),38,734,3. Heat three: 95,61,303,41,31,278,3,14,116,174,6,100,67,444. Heat four: 130,74,333,65,170,85,911,305,115,491,155,72,(78),27 ,734,38. Final: 271,130,31,95,734,444,333,278,61,305,65,303,14,85,9 11,174,170,41,491,72,74,6,100,(78). 130 disqualified from heat one

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 7
Steve Burrows in for final win
Birmingham, Saturday October 31st 2009

Graham Brown reports:  A pair of top six positions in the heats still gave no real hint that Steve Burrows would have the pace to claim the final at Birmingham, but claim it he did, assisted in his quest by a raging battle for the places that kept his pursuers more than busy. For the second part of this double header the action moved south to Northampton where the discovery that he had a seriously bent shock absorber after his heat win left Neil Stimson debating whether he should perhaps leave it on for the rest of the meeting! He decided against that, but went on to take the final honours anyway.

34 cars were on hand for the last outing of the year at The Wheels with four heats the order of the day, a prudent move to try and enable as little damage as possible to be repaired overnight. Although there were no surprises in the runners and riders department, Chris Haird did bring along a partially completed Tigra ‘B’ just to show it off. As we’ve come to expect from the Haird stable, even this unfinished prototype looked very neat and tidy and the potential for some good looking future cars was completely evident.

Russ Wilcox’s weekend was over almost before it began, as he pulled off the heat one grid with a blown up clutch. Tim Pullen didn’t have a great start to the evening either, as he went spinning on the first turn, an incident which attracted Graeme Callender an immediate black cross. Thereafter though, this turned into one of the races of the year.

Ray Harris got out front in his unusual Audi TT, and was undoubtedly working hard to try and take the win. Iain Grayson and Ralph Sanders diced for second until Ralph went by exiting turn three. Behind them, Jason Kew was in hot pursuit of the leaders just ahead of a scrap between Dickie Burtenshaw and Darron Lewis. They had a bit of a coming together between turns three and four, allowing the chasing Jeff Simpson past both of them.

Jeff wasn’t alone either though, with son Matt not far behind and being chased hard by Carl Boardley and Malcolm Blackman. Try as he might, Grayson wasn’t able to withstand this kind of onslaught and vanished from the places. But Kew was still up for it, Jason taking to Sanders’ outside to slip into second.

Anyone could see this now had all the makings of a good race. Underdog Harris was still clinging on at the front despite Kew’s presence on his bumper. Sanders clearly hadn’t given up yet, and now the two Simpson cars were right behind with only a fag paper between Matt, Boardley and Blackman. With the first seven all this close and plenty of laps left, anything could have happened here.

Kew went for the outside pass and got alongside the Audi several times, but still Harris held on. Boardley found a way down the inside of Matt Simpson, Blackman following. Finally the pressure told on Harris, as he flicked the TT sideways into turn three, cannoning into the unfortunate Kew. Jason locked up in a cloud of blue smoke to avoid going into the barriers, but it put him to the back of the bunch in a flash.

Harris was still holding on but now had Jeff Simpson as his immediate opposition. Undeterred by what had happened to Kew, Slim went straight up the outside and, with four laps to go, it was still anybody’s race. The laps counted down as Harris and Simpson raced side by side…three to go….two…and then Jeff’s greater experience won out, as Harris gave it just a bit too much a little too soon exiting turn two. That briefest of slight sideways moments was all it took, and the # 3 was ahead as they got the last lap board.

The race may have been lost but young Ray must have known he was still in one, as Boardley blasted round the outside of Sanders with less than a lap to run, and carried right on with the charge to draw alongside Harris on the final turn. This forced a nigh-on dead heat for second, the verdict going Boardley’s way by just five hundredths of a second, while Sanders, Matt S, Blackman and the unlucky Kew had all played their part in making this the race of the night.

OK, so we weren’t going to get another race like that one, but the remaining heats were still far from dull.

As Lee Wood crawled off the line, delaying several of those behind him at the start of heat two, it was Burrows who set off at point. He was soon to be pestered by Stimson however, Neil having made a capital out of Wood’s slow getaway.

Stimson closed in fast on the leader once he was through to second, and went ahead down the inside as they left turn two. Burrows and James Jamieson then indulged in a lengthy fight over second with JJ going ahead just as the yellows came out for Stu Carter, who was stopped in dodgy spot at the start of the back straight.

Naturally, Stimson’s lead evaporated as a result of this and Jamieson was well placed to zap past soon after the green came back out. That left Neil to face up to a last minute challenge from Dick Hillard, who went by to nab second shortly after they took the 2 Lap board.

With Grayson a non-starter in heat three Burrows was left to assume the lead all on his own some. He wasn’t alone for long however, as Colin Gomm went swiftly up to second and then into the lead. A brief collision up at the far turn saw Hillard, Kew and Lewis all involved in an incident which seemed to have few far reaching effects, but led to Kew’s disqualification after the finish.

With Gomm safely clear, the main focus was the places scrap between Jamieson, Matt Simpson and Blackman. Simpson tried hard up the outside but only succeeded in letting Blackman through. Malcolm couldn’t make a pass stick on JJ either though, and eventually ran wide at the far turn to let Matt by again on the run in to the flag. Gomm finished a comfortable quarter of a lap clear of all this, while Simpson picked up a two place penalty for contact along the way.

Harris went off like a shot at the start of the last heat, clearly determined to keep his nose in front for the full distance this time. He was making a fair fist of it too, helped along by some three wide racing going on behind that definitely slowed some of his pursuit up a bit. Nevertheless, once the race settled down the leader was going to have some kind of fight on his hands sooner or later. Sanders was running second ahead of Stimson, Andy Holtby, Mark Willis and Jeff Simpson, all of them steadily closing in.

Matters came to a head when Sanders and Holtby caught up and launched their bids for the lead at the same moment, giving rise to a three wide moment. A series of small collisions saw Holtby spin out, Harris lose a load of ground somehow, and Sanders take the lead. But with Wood having a smoky spin along the home straight, which somehow managed to involve Colin Smith too, the yellows were soon waving again.

There were only four laps to run when the green came back out with Sanders looking to hold on, in what was to be a sprint finish, from Simpson, Willis and Boardley. Simpson and Boardley were the men on the outside line as the quartet raced to the flag for the proverbial blanket finish. They’d passed the last lap board when Jeff finally made his pass stick rounding the pit bend. There wasn’t enough time for Carl to do the same, but in another virtual dead heat, Sanders only stayed second by just a tad over one hundredth of a second!

Some close stuff in the heats then; what would the 26 car final bring?

As Andy Holtby suffered a spin and Tim Pullen quickly pulled off,  Burrows went straight out into the lead, chased by Harris and Sanders. When the latter pair got to having a serious argument over second, the leader was able to extend his advantage a bit more, which he was going to need with significant amounts of traffic coming up soon.

Sanders’ dogged attempts to pass Harris looked like they’d finally come off when Ralph dived down the inside as they exited the far turn, only for him to find that the Audi had a remarkable turn of straight line speed as it re-passed him down the straight! Eventually though, Ralph put himself in front much more permanently, particularly as Harris spun at the pit bend soon afterwards.

Burrows was now fleeing through the traffic but he wasn’t making any ground on Sanders – quite the reverse in fact, Ralph being spurred on by the presence of Jamieson, Kew and both Simpsons in his mirror. With Sanders soon engaged in fending off their combined assault, Burrows position began to look more and more hopeful the longer the five car dice went on.

Jeff Simpson and Kew had a coming together in the far turn that let Matt S through (and got Slim docked a couple of places) but Sanders was still keeping Jamieson at bay in any case and, in the end, Burrows remained unmolested all the way to an early finish. This was brought about by Woods spinning into the wall on the turn two exit with two laps to run, Colin Gomm somehow getting involved in the aftermath. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 3,41,224,734,303,911,174,491,285,155,500,444,100,191,871.
Heat two: 305,31,271,116,27,61,14,72,65,67,6,130,115,333,(78),38,74.
Heat three: 278,305,911,115,303(-2),116,27,500,14,67,(174),285,31,444.
Heat four: 3,734,41,65,333,72,74,6,100,155,(78),871,224,38.
Final: 116,734,305,303,174,278,3(-2),14,65,72,911,41,115,6,27,74,444,100,155,(78).
174 disqualified from heat three.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 6
Two out of three ain’t bad for Smith
Ipswich, Saturday October 17th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Colin Smith put his unique BMW Z4 to good use at Ipswich where the Essex man took a heat and final double. Only the steward was able to deny him his hat trick, Smith winning on the road in his other heat as well before being demoted for contact.

There were no ‘newbies’ or car changes among the 36 entries which contested the meeting, although Alan White had returned to the fold for the first time this year. Plus, we had very welcome foreign interest too, in the shape of John vd Bosch and Winnie Holtmanns. Mind you, those guys race here so often these days, and do so much travelling in order to do so, perhaps we should declare them honorary Englishmen!  And don’t worry, Laurens van der Velde fans, he’ll be back for the next two rounds as well.

36 cars is still quite enough though, and with only one other formula on and nobody having any desire for a repeat of the previous meeting’s shenanigans, four heats were to be the order of the day. Although I can think of at least one person who thought that this meant the heats were too sparsely populated, it did allow more track space for everybody. This in turn cut down on the amount of contact, deliberate or otherwise, and enabled more vigilant stewarding. Add all that to a lengthier than usual drivers briefing and the fact that several drivers had copped bans following the last Foxhall outing, and nobody had any excuse for getting out of hand.

Certainly, the real fans seemed to approve of the changes, in particular the four heats and a great deal less stoppages. The drivers, on the other hand, can hardly fail to have approved of the lesser amount of damage on offer!

Fewer cars on track or not, the heats were far from dull in any case. The first kicked off with Mark Edwards leading Steve Burrows, Tony Moss and Colin Smith, with Smiffy taking a seriously wide line that almost got him into trouble at turn three before his tyres had warmed up. He was clearly up for it though, and quickly raced up to second spot before nipping under Edwards through the pit bend to go first.

James Jamieson looked as though he might be about to follow in Smith’s tyre tracks in the early going, but spun it away at the pit bend while trying to wrest third away from Burrows, Steve going over the kerb in a shower of sparks at the same time.

There was more action at the other end, where Andy Holtby and Moss got together, the latter smacking into the wall as Holtby spun, with White the man over the kerb this time.

With Smith soon busy building on his lead (and it wasn’t long before it was over a quarter of a lap), attention switched to the places, where Phil Spinks had chased down Edwards and gone by to claim second getting into turn three. But that man Boardley wasn’t far behind either and, with five to go, was challenging for second spot himself. That was as far as anyone else was going to get incidentally, because by that stage the leader was half a lap to the good.

Several passing attempts by Boardley were thwarted before a final challenge led to contact between the pair and Spinks spinning. The steward was in no doubt that Spinks had brought about his own downfall on this occasion, leaving Boardley to claim second behind the rampant Smith.

Tam Rutherford set the pace in heat two but with Andy Steward and Tim Pullen keeping him company. Further back, Chris Haird picked up a black cross for punting Andy Lane wide, as did Mark Fuller for clobbering Dickie Burtenshaw in the pit bend. In fact, the dice between Rutherford, Steward, Pullen and the rest was only benefiting the lively looking Stu Carter, who dived in amongst them. When Rutherford and Steward got together exiting turn two, Carter was able to pounce, snatching up second from the wrong footed Doughnut, before driving round the outside of Rutherford to take it up exiting turn four.

Fuller was in more trouble when he got involved with Burtenshaw again. This time it was on the back straight in an incident which sent Dickie spinning in unison with Pullen and which was to get Mark disqualified altogether in the final reckoning.

Meanwhile, with Carter romping away into a quarter lap lead, Rutherford was still running second but now under pressure from John Holtby, Malcolm Blackman and Haird. They’d all made their way past Rutherford (Blackman and Haird scrapping fiercely over third as they went) shortly before something seemed to come unhinged on Rutherford’s car, sending the Scot straight on at turn one. He appeared to only kiss the wall, but it was enough to cause a yellow and – this near the finish - the race to be called.

Heat three kicked off with Sammy Shudall leaving the line very tardily (missed a gear perhaps?), Sammy getting collected by Andy Holtby and giving rise to a complete restart.

Steward was the man out front once the race got underway, Andy leaving Edwards, Smith and Neil Stimson to argue over the places. Smith picked up a black cross during this, but there was no arguing about his pace. He dealt with the others fairly swiftly before chasing down Steward and going to the front soon after catching him.

Doughnut wasn’t actually looking his best and retired soon afterwards, putting Stimson up to second with John Holtby, Haird and Andy Holtby hard on his heels. Stimson lost out to all the others, while Haird took John Holtby to set off after the leader. Chris was closing the gap too, but there were never going to be enough laps for Smiffy to be caught. It made little difference in the final analysis, because both Smith and Haird lost places to the steward, promoting the Holtby brothers to first (John) and second.

Further down the order there was a near dead heat for seventh/eighth between Willie Hardie and Jason Kew, the transponder computer putting Hardie ahead by around two hundredths of a second. Mark you, this was positively a yawning gap compared to the similar situation involving Keith Martin and Stewart Doak which was going on across the Irish Sea at about the same time!

Mikey Godfrey left pole on the rev limiter and obviously determined to make a good showing in the last heat. He still had Pullen all over him from the word go though.

Much further back, Boardley made his customary quick getaway too, but it was interesting to see how Lee Pepper hounded the world champion in the early laps, Lee demonstrating a remarkable pace in the supposedly outdated 206. It took quite a while for Carl to shake him off too.

Pullen eventually took to Godfrey’s outside and went ahead as they left turn two shortly before Lee Wood lost an oil line at the far bend, the resulting slick carrying the unfortunate Colin Gomm hard into the barriers. Naturally, this precipitated a caution for a clearing up session.

With the cars now closed right up for the restart, it would have been a brave man who bet against Boardley for the win here, as he was lying fourth at the green. He went by Ralph Sanders down the outside of the back stretch and overhauled Godfrey six laps from the finish, before chasing down Pullen to execute another outside blast to the front leaving turn four.

Unsurprisingly, the final grid was a great deal more crowded, offering an opportunity for everything which had so far gone fairly right, to go dramatically wrong. The signs didn’t look good either, when Carter and Darron Lewis both went spinning in the first turn, Haird, James O’Shea and Dick Hillard all crashing in the resulting commotion. 

Following a complete restart, the race settled down with Godfrey and then Pullen leading before Smith came through to take it up, the Z4 taking to the outside to assume the lead exiting turn four.

Boardley had been simply ripping through the traffic right from the off and most of the interest in this centred upon whether he would be able to get through the pack soon enough to challenge Smith’s ever increasing lead. Once inside the top ten, the #41 continued to climb relentlessly up the leader board, a series of outside passes carrying him right up to second spot and in sight of the leader, albeit over a quarter of a lap behind.

But, despite rapidly diminishing Smith’s lead towards the end, Carl ran out of laps and the BMW was still comfortably ahead when it mattered.

There was some last minute drama further back. Pullen had been fighting a dogged rearguard action to hold onto a decent place as the race unwound, and making a good job of it too. He was still running sixth with the 2 Lap board out, when the car suddenly went sick and slowed. He was in fact running out of gas, but the car kept going all the way to the flag. Unfortunately, it was really limping by then and caught out the fast finishing Andy Holtby and Jason Kew, the resulting collision sending Pullen spinning and the British champ hard into the wall. As some small consolation, this all happened after the flag, leaving the result attained by all three unchanged.

Overall however, it was a night that sent seemingly everybody, fans, drivers and officials, home in a much better frame of mind than the previous Foxhall.  Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 491,41,285,303,278,31,3,444,45,734,14,61,305.
Heat two: 85,6,911,72,(66), 115(-2),174,(68),333,65,74,155,130,271,(467),198,100,500.
Heat three: 6,61,491(-2),115(-2),271,3,72,174,14,444,(467),74(-2),68,8,285.
Heat four: 41,500,85,27,155,31,911,303,65,734,130,(66),100.
Final: 491,41,115,27,14,6,85(-2),911,500,61,174,303,130,444,(66),100,72(-2),155.
68 disqualified from heat two for contact.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 5
O’Shea survives for second Foxhall final
Ipswich, Saturday September 26th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  On a night when survival was as important as speed in a meeting bedevilled by shunts and stoppages, Irish interloper James O’Shea emerged with his second final win of the season from the curtailed main event.

There was a bumper (and I use the term advisedly) entry for this, which at one time exceeded 40 cars. A couple of late cancellations and non-starters brought this down to an actual 38 cars racing, with Tony Moss kept in the pits with engine problems, along with Alan White, who had a difference of opinion with the scrutineers about which tires he was going to use.

Winnie Holtmanns and John van den Bosch were both making one of their frequent trips from the continent, while from this side of the water Richard Smith returned to the fold for the first time in a long time. It was also ’welcome back’ to Phil Spinks for the first time since the world final.

One complete newcomer was Ray Harris, the man with the ex-Steve Mannet Audi TT, looking very different to the day he collected it at Hednesford when the bright orange colours and 303 numbers it was wearing – allied to the fact it was parked near the Simpson’s bus - caused considerable discussion among onlookers. Now the car is liveried in black, white and gold, and very smart it looked too.

Proceedings didn’t start too well, with Tam Rutherford’s car catching fire in the pit lane and causing a short delay while that was dealt with. However, this did allow the late arriving Holtbys to get on track, the team having taken seven and half hours to make the trip after falling foul of a road closure and monster traffic jam on the A1.

The actual racing started with a relatively uneventful first heat. O’Shea and Dave Burrows still managed to get together in a first bend clinch, with Burrows going off as a result. Andy Holtby’s rush about to get into the race clearly wasn’t going to end that well, as he had an ‘off’ along the home straight and clobbered the marker tyres.

Tim Pullen led from flag to flag without ever being challenged by runner up Lee Wood. Wood had his hands full in any case fending off firstly O’Shea, and latterly a sharp looking Lee Pepper in the closing stages.

Heat two was when things went downhill. They’d hardly got going - Rutherford leading - when an early stoppage became necessary after a big back straight crash involving several cars (Matt Simpson, Steve Thompson and Gavin Murray among them) and which saw Mikey Godfrey’s Saxo conveyed for some distance on the bonnet of Darron Lewis’ Merc. The Citroen tilted drunkenly over but somehow never actually rolled and amazingly, was even fit to take part in the restart!

The next attempt got no further than the first lap, when O’Shea tried to cut across from his inside starting slot and got collected by Luke Armiger, the Irishman ending up backwards in the wall by the pit gate.

A further restart saw Rutherford out front again with David Brooks and Godfrey disputing second. Neil Stimson took a trip to the wall rounding the pit bend, while Richard Smith pulled up with left front damage, suggesting that he too had been in the barriers.

Suddenly, Rutherford was out and, with the erstwhile leader gone, Brooks assumed the top slot – but not for long. A kerfuffle going through turns 1-2 saw Spinks go over the kerb and, although it was unclear what happened next, this appeared to send Colin Smith wide and into Carl Boardley. Boardley spun into the wall, taking James Jamieson with him and, with O’Shea stopped at the same point, the yellows were out again. This was an occurrence that clearly caught Godfrey out, as he ran pretty hard into the back of Brooks as they stopped.

So, yet another restart. Godfrey immediately lost a load of places when a clash with Armiger saw Mikey go over the kerbs, this putting Armiger in position to challenge Brooks for the lead. But the yellow had closed the field right up of course, and now there were any number of others handily placed to try for the win, including Jeff Simpson, Andy Steward, Mark Willis, Pepper and Chris Haird.

Their combined assault on Brooks eventually led to a collision between Armiger and Steward that let Simpson through exiting turn four. And, following a couple of laps of side by side racing, it was Slim who took it up around the outside. That looked to be the end of that, but far from it. Haird was on something of a charge now, passing Willis and then zapping down the outside of Brooks into turn one.

After that, Simpson and Haird diced for the lead all the way to the end whilst remaining in that order.

The third heat was little better than the second in terms of problems. Early leader Brooks wasn’t long in being interrupted by another yellow flag period, this time after Armiger had gone spinning on the exit from turn two, Smiffy and Haird ending up in the wall in the aftermath.

It quickly became clear who Armiger held responsible for his rotation, as he latched onto the back of Lee Wood and sent him straight on into the wall at the restart. Another yellow, another restart, but not before Wood had been removed to the medical room (where he spent most of the rest of the night) and Armiger removed from the race and loaded up.

It was Brooks versus Pullen when they got going once more, with Willis and Willie Hardie next up. Pullen tried for an outside pass but ended up sliding into the Armco at turn three, leaving Willis to try the outside trip instead. Mark’s efforts only served to let Hardie by underneath, the Scot emerging from a clinch with the lead but also the steward’s displeasure. A two place penalty elevated Willis to his first win since his return to the formula, also benefiting Dickie Burtenshaw who inherited second.

Not for the first time this season, the final was in serious danger of curtailment, with the track curfew looming large by the time the cars came out. Indeed, the drivers were informed before the green flag that one serious stoppage and it would be all over for the night.

The steward did his best to overlook minor incidents, such as Jason Kew sliding off, Godfrey having a further off along the back stretch, and John vd Bosch and Sammy Shudall performing synchronised spins by the start/finish. Gavin Murray and Steve Thompson both suffered spins at the same spot (Boardley being adjudged responsible for the former, which was to get him disqualified) with Tam Rutherford hanging on out front all the while.

Rutherford was under immense pressure though, with O’Shea trying hard to get past and eventually succeeding down the outside. Unfortunately, the Dubliner didn’t have long to enjoy his lead as second man Brooks went spinning on the exit from turn four, sparking off a multi-car crash that finally put a stop to the race and the meeting with only thirteen laps gone.

As many others have already commented, this was hardly one of National Hot Rod racing’s finest hours. Indeed, I would go so far as to say it was one of the worst ‘rod meetings I’ve ever seen, and I have seen some rubbish down the years, including the infamous three car final at Arlington. That event is often cited as the nadir of hot rod racing. How ironic then, that this latest episode plumbed the depths - at least in part - not through having too few cars on the track, but rather too many.  Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 500,333,155,74,3,41,734,174,303,95,170,31,14,68,85,6,278,(66),271,116,8,198.
Heat two: 3,115,65,911,155,100,14,170,285,(519),74,444,491,224,198.
Heat three: 65,100,72(-2),911,278,31,6,285(-2),61,85,174,67,68,(66),444,734,---,491(-2).
Final: 74,67,155,285,278(-2),3,6,100,72,303,31,174,65,(41),911,115,61,491,14,734,8,170,(66)

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 4
Boardley’s first blood with SLK
Hednesford, Monday August 31st 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Despite a recent run of poor results and luck to match, Carl Boardley started to turn things around on bank holiday Monday, a more favourable grid position allied to a re-vamped Mercedes carrying him to a heat and final double.

Carl might always have been thinking of using the Merc for this meeting but, after the big shunt at NIR, it happened really as a matter of necessity. The Tigra was still in the hospital in any case, but had acted as an organ donor along the way, most of its suspension components having found their way onto the SLK.

Other points of interest among the entry included the welcome return of Sammy Shudall, although still in the 206 I believe he’d planned on exchanging for something else during his ‘rest period’. Darron Lewis continued to be in evidence, presumably meaning that his Merc still hasn’t found a buyer, while Billy Bonnar was back for another southern outing, now at the wheel of his ex-Boardley Tigra.

Andy Lane’s car had staged a marvellous recovery since his unfortunate part in the big NIR crash, showing evidence of much hard work and determination on the team’s part to get it all sorted in time.

Iain Grayson got off the line first in heat one, but a first lap, first bend three wide moment saw Luke Armiger and Sammy Shudall hare past to begin a race long duel for the lead. This was still going on when problems started to develop towards the finish. Firstly, David Brooks went spinning down by the start/finish. Then Dick Hillard took a spin going into the West bend (it looked to me as though there may have been some contact with Graeme Callender involved in this), Dick going into the wall with Gavin Murray.

The race wasn’t staying green much longer in any case, as a multi-car crash on the back straight, involving Callender, Chris Haird, James ‘O Shea and several others, brought them all up short.

The resulting caution period failed to put a stop to the lead dice between Armiger and Shudall, with Luke only getting any peace on the last lap, once Shudall had been passed by Neil Stimson. Sammy still didn’t give up the fight just the same, and with others clamouring to get in on the act, Armiger was able to gain a few yards advantage and secure the win.

Shudall was set to be in the frame again right from the off in the second heat, but he was still not going to get a lonely race out in the lead. He was pressed hard by Colin Smith’s Z4 all the way from mid-distance and then very nearly threw it away with a last bend spin into the bargain. Sammy held onto the big sideways moment well, something Smiffy didn’t manage to do with second place, the steward taking him down a couple of spots for biffing Shudall a few times during their lead battle.

Mikey Godfrey set something of the tone for heat three by embarrassingly spinning in the warm up laps. He wasn’t the only one having problems however, as they’d barely seen the green flag before several small incidents of contact saw Brooks spin again. O’Shea managed to get caught up in this too, with Brooks ending up parked precariously atop the winners ramp! Amazingly, he was able to take part in the complete restart, although not for long, the car slowing with some kind of malady just as everyone else was getting going.

Following that restart, Grayson had another – much lengthier – spell in the lead. However, Boardley’s less than great results lately meant that he had a depressed average score, which also meant he was starting somewhat further forward than is customary. It came as no great surprise, therefore, that it wasn’t long before the world champion was through to the front. The interesting thing was that Colin Smith and the Bee-Em were closing in once they’d made it up second. The gap came down and down until Smiffy was right on the tail of the SLK but, just as with John Christie at the Nationals, Boardley simply turned up the wick again when he needed to, and had some daylight back between them at flag fall.

It was Carl’s first win with the SLK of course, and hardly an inspiring victory either, given that he’d started so much further forward than he’s used to. The funny thing is that, nowadays, when watching a race like that third heat, you don’t tend to think “Oh, Smiffy’s catching him, he must be going well”. No, what you catch yourself thinking, is: “Smiffy’s closing on him, wonder what’s wrong with Boardley’s car?” such has been the dominance of the # 41 for so long. Unfair to both parties of course, because Carl can have an off day like anyone else, Colin might have been going particularly well, plus Carl was in the Merc which, up to now, has shown little sign of being as all-conquering as his Tigra.

But anyway, whether the Merc is as good as the Tigra or not, that heat three wasn’t going to be a solitary victory.

Grayson had another go at leading in the final until he lost out to Shudall going through the West bend. Boardley was already on the march, and had made his way up to fourth by the time the yellows flew after Jeff Simpson, Steve Thompson, David Newall and Bonnar had all ended up in the wall on the East bend exit.

Armiger moved up to second and Boardley to third (both at Grayson’s expense) once the green was back out, with Boardley then blasting past Armiger down the outside of the back straight. That enabled him to mount an immediate attack on Shudall’s lead but, before he got the chance, a spinning Ralph Sanders caused some havoc along the back stretch, with Matt Simpson going hard into the barriers.

Matt’s crash had badly damaged his rear axle, the resulting mess of gear oil taking quite a time to clear up and dust down. All the while, threatening black clouds were gathering overhead, carrying with them the odd drop of rain into the bargain. A run to the finish on slicks with a partially oily track dampened by rain did not look like a great prospect but fortunately, the rain just about stayed away.

With the race back under way, long time leader Shudall put up a spirited defence of his position against Boardley’s onslaught. But with the race staying green for the remaining laps, the quadruple world winner simply took to the outside line and stayed out there until he was in front, eventually running out the winner by over a quarter of a lap.

After his good drive up to that point, Shudall must have been disappointed to find that Carl wasn’t the only one who was able to overtake him, with Lane and Colin Gomm racing past as well, before Gomm took Lane to assume second spot. That reckoned without the ultra-fast finishing Malcolm Blackman though, as he too overhauled Lane and then fought hard with Gomm before finally grabbing second coming out of the very last corner.

Gomm, Haird and Lane were all right behind in what was a very close finish for places second thru fifth. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 519,271,72,444,734,100,41,130,155,3,170,174,85,6,601,219,191.
Heat two: 444,217,271,491(-2),100,285,303,6,116,174,61,911,305,85,219,192,27
Heat three: 41,491,278,130,115,285,305,519,170,303,911,31,72,61,3,333,74.
Final: 41,911,278,115,130,444,271,519,174,305,285,95,170,491,217,72, 61,85,333,6,734,100,191,844.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 3
Holtby’s final, Thompson’s day
Northampton, August 23rd 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Although John Holtby scored an immaculate feature win at NIR, ‘man of the match’ was undoubtedly Steve Thompson, the Scunthorpe man taking two heat wins, with only Holtby able to spoil his hat trick in the final.

Just for once, not too many ‘parish notices’ with regard to the entry, although Tam Rutherford was out for his first run down south this year, while fellow Scot Willie Hardie had reverted to his Tigra, rather than the Merc. Might be significant that bit, for those plotting fantasy hot rod teams or even just studying form generally, given what happened in the first heat of the day.

Andy Beaven set the pace in that first heat aided and abetted by a number of those who’d started behind him all ending up in a big heap on the pit bend, Alan Evans, Dickie Burtenshaw, Tim Pullen, Neil Stimson and Mark Edwards all getting involved.

Iain Grayson was the one giving chase to Beaven initially, but it was Hardie who eventually cost Beaven his lead. Passing up another chance to race his SLK was working well for Willie too, as he stayed well clear of a developing dice for second between Ralph Sanders and Matt Simpson. With Grayson having fallen by the wayside around mid-distance, Simpson overtook Sanders to set off after the leader.

Although Matt was whittling the gap down with every passing lap, there just weren’t enough of those laps left for him to stand any chance of completing the job, Hardie taking the flag still a short way clear.

Heat two had another Scot in the frame as Rutherford traded the lead back and forth with Russell Wilcox. Rutherford led to begin with, and then lost out to Wilcox on the pit bend. But the Scot went back to the front as Evans came to join in the dice before spinning on the exit from turn four.

Wilcox still wasn’t getting any peace as Andy Lane now arrived to hassle him instead but, despite taking a black cross in the midst of it all, Russ managed to see off Lane’s attack and re-passed Rutherford.

With Rutherford suddenly forced back to fourth, Lane and now Thompson muscled in on the lead dice, with Thompson going to the front after a three wide moment exiting turn two. Steve never gained that much of an advantage over Lane, but never looked like losing either once he was in front. Thus Thompson went on to take his first win, with Wilcox eventually forced to settle for fourth as Hardie forged through to third by the finish.

Beaven had another go at leading in the third race before having to give best this time to David Brooks and Wilcox. These two might have run at the front all the way to the finish, until a series of small collisions all along the back straight eliminated several cars and left Lane limping to a stop on the outside of the home straight. Unfortunately, he got hit hard by Carl Boardley, who was flat out at the time, severely damaging both cars and bringing out the red flags.

The restart naturally closed the field right up, allowing Thompson to swiftly deal with the likes of Wilcox and Brooks and, in the process, turn seventh place into the lead and win number two.

Following an immediate re-start after Matt Simpson failed to get off the grid at the first time of asking (stripped gears in the transmission being the cause of what our American friends refer to as a ‘no movement condition’), it was Beaven who led again in the final until Wilcox and Brooks went by. Chris Haird had also departed before the green was shown for the second time, Chris understandably not fancying a race with the sticking throttle he’d briefly experienced on the first start.

Wilcox and Brooks had a brief dice for the lead until Russ managed to gain a small edge that meant he wasn’t constantly under pressure anymore but, once again, Thompson was clearly the man to watch. He’d progressed all the way up to sixth when the yellows flew for Colin Smith, who was blissfully unaware that the back of the BMW was well and truly on fire, Colin’s R/C unit having picked a particularly bad time to go on the blink.

With the fire extinguished (and fortunately, not too much damage beyond some singed fibreglass on the Z4), they set off again. With the field closed right up and seven laps still to run, Thompson looked set fair to make good on his hat trick. But Holtby – third at the time of the stoppage – had other ideas. He managed to pass Brooks and Wilcox pretty quickly, taking advantage of a car that didn’t seem to mind either crossing the damp mess left by the fire just before turn one, or the wider line necessary in order to avoid it.

By these methods John gained both the lead and enough of a gap to withstand Thompson’s last minute charge once he was through to second. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 72,303,734,85,115,174,198,(3),95,305,61,74,27,31,271,519,45,500,100,83.
Heat two: 170,130,72,219,303,174,6,31,41,911,95,271,491,155,519,192,333,67,116,8.
Heat three: 170,67,115,333,219,65,911,198,61,6,100,155,491,45,74,8,83,191,85.
Final: 6,170,219,67,72,65,85,95,174,198,155,61,271,31,74,734.
#3 failed an inside weight check after heat one and therefore loses all points from the meeting.

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 2
Great day for O’Shea
Ipswich, August 15th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  James O’Shea took a heat and final double at the second world series round putting himself well on track for world final qualification following his brave decision to try for it via the English series rather than at home in Ireland.

A few last minute cancellations took the entry down to a still highly respectable 36 cars. Among them we had Mark Edwards, making his first foray to Foxhall since joining the class, and another English outing for John vd Bosch, while Carl Boardley had not made good on his threat to use the Merc at qualifying rounds. We welcomed two NHR rookies too, in the shape of Andy Lane and Paul Harris. Harris is a former Lightning Rod exponent who has acquired the smartly turned out ex-John Sibbald 206, while Lane will need no introduction to long time Banger fans, although of course, he has been a notable Spedeworth 2.0 rod driver for a number of years now. Andy was at the helm of a brand new and totally immaculate Ludlow Tigra.

Perhaps most notable of all on the driver front, was the long awaited return of Mark Willis – can it really be seven years since he last raced? Mark was in a brand new self-built 206cc, constructed in just six weeks start to finish, including the frame. Mark is one of the drivers that I always figured had unfinished business in Nationals so it was good to see him back in the fold.

Prior to the meeting, and with all the heat one cars lined up on track, a very moving minute’s silence was held in memory of Mavis Eaton, with all drivers and officials lined up on the infield. We were joined by Les and Roy, and Sue Parsons (née Eaton). I’m pleased to report that you could have heard a pin drop in the stadium during that minute when we all contemplated our own personal memories of Spedeworth’s “First lady”.

Spedeworth 2.0 litre convert Steve Burrows has had some fairly mixed fortunes since joining the National class, but certainly seemed to put all that behind him in the opening heat. He led from flag to flag, chased by Ralph Sanders until his car went sick, and then by Jason Kew and Andy Holtby, although none got within a quarter of a lap.

That is not to say it was a boring race, because it wasn’t, with even some three wide racing going on at times. One such time involved James Jamieson, Steve Thompson and Chris Haird, a clinch where something clearly had to give, that ‘something’ being when Chris went spinning along the back straight. Boardley too, had an entertaining race, getting black crossed for contact with Thompson, and later smacking the wall while trying to wrest fourth spot away from Dick Hillard.

Burrows looked like he might be on for a repeat performance in heat two, but was eventually relegated by Tony Moss going down the back straight. Holtby also took Burrows as they raced around the back marking Harris car, with Andy later going by Moss via the outside trip before pressing on to record a clear win.

There was a terrific places dice in the closing stages between Hillard, Malcolm Blackman, Haird and Gavin Murray, with Dick driving at the top of his game to keep his hard pressing challengers at bay to the end.

The race ended with David Brooks and Willie Hardie in the wall at turn one, following an incident for which Jeff Simpson attracted a disqualification.

Heat three provided O’Shea’s first real chance to shine, as he turned a pole start into an immediate lead. He went on to lead every lap, although this was not for want of trying on the part of Moss, who never gave up the chase and got right on terms when the leader was briefly delayed by a lapped car two laps from home.

Some sterling work to get Hardie’s Merc back out came to naught when a half open bonnet got him black flagged.

The final was always going to be a fraught affair, with a crowded track and a great deal of oil and dust left from the ELMS’ previous race. In fact, the clear up session this necessitated took so long that the chances of getting in the full 35 laps always looked a bit dismal.

Burrows was first to show here, with O’Shea chasing and closing in the early laps. A brief yellow flag period – thrown when John Holtby spun to a stop on the inside of the far bend - didn’t alter that scenario, with O’Shea finally closing in and snatching the lead down the inside going through turns three/four.

Burrows always did his best to keep the Irishman in sight while the steward did his best to keep the race under green, despite several spinners and other minor incidents. But the gods of oval racing were not smiling on us and another caution period is almost always inevitable when you really, really don’t want one.

It came when Matt Simpson crashed heavily in turn one, with a lot of time lost now as Matt needed help from the car (fortunately he was unhurt, a bitten tongue apart) and his wreck had left water right across the track.

The stoppage still wasn’t enough to close the gap between O’Shea and Burrows, as there were several backmarkers between them at the time the yellows came out. However, it was sufficient to allow Holtby (who’d been making moves in the right direction throughout) to put an immediate pass on Burrows. Murray – whose car was throwing a spectacular shower of sparks every time he entered turn one – wasn’t long in following suit, with Burrows eventually to disappear from the places after contact with Jason Kew saw him spin out on turn four.

With O’Shea now free from traffic he was able to stay safely clear of the rest, even with such fast movers as Holtby and Murray in pursuit, and it looked as though the race may just run to a finish. That was, until a whole series of incidents brought out the reds this time. Kew had slid wide and spun exiting turn two, Neil Stimson ended up in the wall, as did Jeff Simpson and Hillard, the latter blocking the track on the exit from T4. With the curfew rapidly approaching, the race was called at this point with 24 of the scheduled 35 laps completed.  Graham Brown
Results:
Heat 1: 116  61  174 31 333  639 41(X-2)  85  278 305  491 911  170 65 130  66  74  83  115
Heat 2: 61 192  116 31 911  115 95 198  491 6  271 85 155  130 303  500 67 225
#3 disqualified for contact
Heat 3: 74 192  734 155  95  170 41 278  305 174  303 3  6 65 333  45  519 83 66
#639 disqualified
Final: 74 61 95 155  734 31 911  170 519  41  115 100  305 271  278 65 130  491(X-2)  83  66  500 3  6
#174 disqualified, #72 disqualified
Keith Duke’s photos

2010 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 1
Pullen no punches!
Birmingham Wheels, Saturday July 25th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Despite having had a fairly large crash at the same track not so long ago, it was former BriSCA F2 racer Tim Pullen who won the final as the Nationals got back on the World Series trail at Birmingham Wheels. In fact, Tim could actually have had two or even three wins if things had gone entirely his way.

A few notes about the entry before we get into the racing. Darron Lewis, having sold his still-virtually-new-in-any-case Tigra, was out in a spanking new Merc, turned out in precisely the same livery as the Vauxhall had been, and very nice it looked too.

Carl Boardley was in his Merc as well, as he had said he would be for all the qualifiers. He’d also decided to race it at the Nationals, but the best laid plans and all that…

James O’Shea, despite having raced a number of times in England already this year, was having his first outing as an ‘official’ English qualifier, while Alan Evans was back in the fold for the first time this year. Iain Grayson was also back with us for the first time in a while, and there was one complete newcomer, former Lightning Rod driver Andy Beaven. Andy did a deal to trade a couple of Lights for the ex-Richard Spavins 206cc, which has been totally re-prepared and nicely sign written.

Willie Hardie had reverted back to his Tigra after using the Merc at the World, leaving me to wonder if maybe he hadn’t liked the new car?

“I’m not using it (the SLK) here just because I want to keep the car good for the National championship”, he said.  “I like the Merc, I think it’s better than the Tigra. I definitely like it better to drive but we’re saving it for special occasions just for now. I’ll be in it for the world qualifiers soon enough though”.

Grayson was very slow away from his solitary berth on row two in the first heat, and as the rest swerved around him Pullen turned pole into an immediate lead. There were a few black crosses being bandied about in the early laps, Grayson became an even earlier retirement and O’Shea had a spin along the back straight.

When things settled down a bit, Pullen was well established in the lead and stayed that way until mid distance, but being tracked closely by Lee Wood with no one else within striking distance. Jason Kew had worked his way up to third, but he was a quarter of a lap behind the two leaders, where Wood’s JPS look-a-like car found a way past and eventually won by a clear margin, his first victory since joining the formula from the Classics.

Kew did his utmost to hang onto third, but after several Raceceiver warnings to hold just one line, he was eventually forced to let Stu Carter past although not the equally hard pressing Malcolm Blackman.

The second race looked as though it might provide an overdue maiden victory for Mikey Godfrey, the Saxo driver going by Evans at the pit bend exit on lap one and then leading right up to the five lap board. As Mikey was busy working on his lead, there was some three wide racing going on behind him. Lewis pulled up his new mount, David Brooks somehow ended up backwards against the back straight wall (didn’t see what happened there, sorry) and Boardley went spinning in turn three after getting clumped twice by Steve Thompson, once on the way into the corner and once in the middle of it.

Godfrey’s efforts hadn’t managed to prevent Dickie Burtenshaw and Mark Fuller from catching him, but Mikey managed to fend off their attentions OK. Unfortunately for the leader they were not alone by then, eventual winner Matt Simpson going by five laps from home and Thompson getting past in traffic a couple of tours later, although Steve was subsequently disqualified for the incident with Boardley.

The third heat was almost a carbon copy of the first as far as Pullen and Wood were concerned, with Pullen leading initially before being taken by Wood. The opposition were much closer in this one though, with James Jamieson and Matt Simpson both looking hungry for the win, while at the same time battling with each other as they carved up the places, including Pullen’s second spot.

Simpson tried repeatedly to get by down the outside and actually got as far as being alongside down the home straight at one point, still without managing to make the pass stick.  Despite the ferocity of their dice, these two were still closing on the leader all the while too. It did look like the very fact that they were locked in combat might save Wood from their advances even if they caught him, but with four laps to run, the black Peugeot starting pouring smoke from the left front wheel. Whether a hub had failed or something much more serious (like the engine, and the smoke just happened to be coming out of the wheel arch) I never discovered, but he was slowing drastically and appeared to be laying oil too.

Jamieson and Simpson went haring past, suddenly with Jeff Simpson hot on their heels as well. Matt went sliding out wide around the pit bend on the last lap allowing Slim to nip through, but with no time to do anything about stopping JJ powering on to the win.

The final saw Godfrey still looking for that elusive win, but it wasn’t going to come on this particular evening, as he ended up in the wall on the exit from turn two very early on in proceedings. Pullen got out front from another pole start and had soon built up a big lead over Evans and Fuller, who had a protracted scrap over second. Eventually, Alan ran very wide indeed through the pit bend, allowing Fuller through.

It was clear Evans had a steadily worsening understeer problem because, before long, Kew, Hardie, Jamieson, Carter and a host of others had all taken advantage as well.

With Fuller seemingly unable to close down the quarter of a lap gap to the leader, it seemed that any eventual challenge to Pullen’s win would be coming from further back. Once again, Kew was getting told off for an overly keen defence of third spot, but finally Hardie found a way down the inside, with Jamieson following him through.

Kew was severely out of the groove now, Jason fighting to try and get the car back down the track only to find himself heading for the wall on the turn two exit instead. The original impact wasn’t all that severe, but the consequences for Boardley were, when he turned up to find a car right where he wasn’t expecting one to be!

“I think he must have come back off the wall just a little bit”, Carl opined later, “Because I’d already thought $*%#, this is going to be close, I’d better give him some room. But it obviously wasn’t quite enough…”

The merest clip between the two sent the 41 car spinning wildly into the wall, the SLK cannoning off only to go in again further down the track, shedding wheels and spraying oil and wreckage behind it.

Cue yellows.

Of course, the caution meant that Pullen had lost the lot in terms of his lead, but Tim got away briskly at the restart and quickly put some daylight between himself and second man Fuller. But Fuller wasn’t really the danger man as things turned out; Thompson was.

Steve was clearly on a charge here and swiftly shrugged off a challenge from Carter and both Simpsons, to attack Jamieson’s fourth place. This was obviously never going to be an easy task, but Thompson went straight up the outside and completed the pass along the dust strewn back straight, probably the move of the night. After that, it wasn’t too surprising that neither Hardie nor Fuller had much to offer in the way of resistance and, with five to go, Pullen’s one-time quarter of a lap advantage was dwindling fast.

But he still held a slender margin over Thompson at the end, thus securing the Tran-X Birmingham Crown and a highly popular win in front of many of his former BriSCA F2 colleagues and fans. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 333,500,85,174,911,72,41,100,31,217,519,155,115,116,219,74,83
Heat two: 303,(170),27,911,305,3,61,100,219,68,217,6,72,116,41,155,871,83
170 disqualified for contact with 41.
Heat three: 305,3,303,85,170,27,68,174,31,61,6,74,519,191,871
Final: 500,170,68,72,85,305,303,3,115,911,31,6,217,155,116,519,74,100,871

***

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 16
Spinks’ trophy, Haird’s title
Northampton, Sunday June 7th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  The final round of the 2008/9 World Series produced all the drama expected of it, with no less than nine drivers still in with a chance of grabbing the points championship at the start of the day. It was Chris Haird who leapt out of group two to snatch the top slot at the end of it all; while despite failing to impress in the heats, Phil Spinks came good to take the Toovey Engines Midland trophy in the final.

There really was everything to play for at both ends of the table, with the closest points championship fight ever going on at the top end, while several teams were scrapping to either get in the all-important top eighteen world qualifiers, or to stay above the cut. Even Steve Thompson – missing so far for all of 2009 – came back out to try and re-claim a place at Ipswich in July, with John Holtby – having got his car back from his brother – the man in the ‘bump spot’.

Despite the latest possible stage of qualifying having been reached, there was still a respectable 29 cars for this one, including former Spedeworth 2.0 racer Steve Burrows, who suffered a blown diff in practice which needed changing before he could race, a job he just barely completed prior to the start of heat one.

Andy Holtby was back in “his” usual Tigra, having borrowed it back from its new owner after finding he couldn’t get on with John’s SLK at Ipswich. James O’Shea was continuing his English racing here, while Winnie Holtmanns was back for another outing and did at least get to race this time, although his car was plagued by misfire troubles all day.

Colin Gomm suffered similar problems in practice (traced to an oiled plug) and was probably lucky not to get messed around later on too, as his motor had obviously decided to go the two-stroke route judging from the cloud of blue smoke emitted every time it fired up!

Right: on with the racing.

Or at least, on with it if you weren’t Andy Holtby, who had to pull off after the warm-ups with a busted half shaft.

The early morning downpours had fortunately given up long before the start of the meeting and David Newall made a clean break on a nice dry track in the opening heat.  The Scot was soon well clear of the rest, where Mikey Godfrey was fighting a rearguard action in second to try and get a world final place for himself. It was all in vain though, as he was forced backwards, Jay Austin – showing some more good form - getting home second.  Haird scored a significant third place, having cut through the traffic in determined looking style, although his repainting of his car’s bumpers in blue did make me think I was watching Colin Smith a lot of the time!

Austin and Haird weren’t the only ones making strides in the right direction either, with Dickie Burtenshaw looking pretty good (despite losing out to Haird and Jeff Simpson in the closing stages) and Jeff Simpson going well too. Oh and, of course, Carl Boardley wasn’t hanging around either.

Ralph Sanders was soon forced to stop in heat two (he was back in the cc for this) when the bonnet came open, while Newall looked like he might be on for a repeat performance, leading all the way up to an early yellow flag period.

This was brought about by a collision involving Burrows and Willie Hardie, with both men hitting each other and the back straight barriers very hard. Burrows was out for the day with a load of damage, while Hardie’s Tigra also looked pretty second hand on the left front.

Newall was still in charge for the restart, but with all the cars now closed right up of course, it was the sharp looking Kym Weaver who got through to take this one (after a couple of entertaining side-by-side laps with Newall) with Haird in an even more telling second spot this time. Newall just managed to hold onto third at the line from a charging Slim Simpson.

Fast repair work had Hardie back on the grid for heat three, where Luke Armiger was the first to show after Godfrey seemed very slow leaving at the green. A bit of a kerfuffle between Ronnie McKenzie and Burtenshaw entering turn one saw both cars either off the track momentarily or slowed by the incident, but they were already some way behind Weaver, who wasted even less time blasting through to the front in this one.

Andy Holtby was looking much more at home in his old car and worked his way through to second, passing the likes of Godfrey, Sanders, Austin and Armiger on his way there.

Perhaps of more significance however, was the minor places dice between John Holtby and Thompson. They were a long way adrift of the leaders, but of course, the race win was not what was at stake here. Thompson was trying repeated attacks down the outside, only to be frustrated each time by John finding a bit of luck with the traffic. It was Holtby who came out on top too, after a last minute clash between Hardie and Malcolm Blackman rounding the pit bend gave him another little break through the resulting confusion that simply didn’t go Thompson’s way. Thus Holtby scored an eighth place versus Thompson’s eleventh.

Hardie and Blackman weren’t the only ones trading paint either, with Boardley – charging towards the front again – and Gavin Murray (going similarly quickly) having a clear disagreement about who’s bit of track was who’s going down the home straight. It was hard to tell (at least from the angle I saw it from) who’s fault – if anyone’s – this might have been. What wasn’t difficult to tell though, was that Boardley had not only decided that group one was still possible, but that the points championship might still yet be his.

Armiger and then Newall were the initial leaders in the final, with Newall looking pretty comfortable in the lead once he had it.

But the longer final distance was always going to give the fast movers from the back of the grid a chance to make their mark. Andy Holtby was looking quick, despite a little scrimmage with Hardie that eventually saw the latter spin on the pit bend. Also, anyone who could spare the time from watching the leaders would have enjoyed old sparring partners Boardley and Blackman – both men now looking to secure group one slots for Ipswich – making plenty of moves in the right direction.

But it was Phil Spinks who was looking really dangerous to the leaders. Unable to get his car handling in the heats, he’d fitted his new tyre for the final and was making excellent use of it.

After relegating Billy Bonnar, Spinks parried the attentions of Haird and Weaver (neither of whom were exactly easy meat either) to scoot past Armiger and set off after the leader. His dice with Newall was short and sharp, with Phil even smacking the home straight wall at one point he was out so wide, but once he was through, the result was never in doubt.

Haird had second by the finish, making him the clear English champion for this year, while Boardley’s fourth spot set the seal on his climb back to group one. Matt Simpson was left to rue his two missed rounds, which still left him pretty easily in group one and only losing the points battle by thirteen points, despite it all.

The dropped scores did Gomm and Dick Hillard no favours, leaving both men in group two, while at the bottom of the qualifiers, Jeff Simpson used Jason Kew’s absence to advantage to move up to group four. By implication, that put Jason down to the last group with John Holtby, who clung onto the bump spot by eleven points from Thompson’s last minute threat.

All of which leaves Thompson, Billy Bonnar, Godfrey and the rest to have to wait on another year.

Now, all roads lead to Ipswich. No Press day this year of course, but the T-500 beckons and after that, you know what. Graham Brown
Heat one: 601,427,115,3,100,155,41,278,303,844,14, 198,85,187,271,116,(74),27
Heat two: 209,115,601,3,95,519,31,911,303,170,6,198,14,(74),271,844
Heat three: 209,61,155,41,95,519,427,6,911,72(X-2),170,85,278,31,100,27
Final: 14,115,209,41,3,601,911,61,6,303,155,170,278,85,271

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 15
Colin’s purple patch
Ipswich, Monday May 25th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  On an afternoon when every race featured a different winner it was the purple Peugeot of Colin Gomm that struck form at just the right time to not only make off with the feature final but also go top of the points by the end of the day.

Of course, the first and most major talking point of the day was DW’s investment in some new surfacing for the track corners. Reports from the previous weekend’s 2.0 Hot Rod and Superstox racers all seemed positive, but it is the Nationals that the track modifications are really aimed at, so this was going to be the acid test of the new asphalt. Mark you, in the practice sessions I watched, everybody seemed to be doing their best to stay resolutely on the old stuff! Nevertheless, once the racing got underway for real, that would all change…

As if that wasn’t enough to be going along with, there were plenty of other items of interest going on in the pits. It came as no surprise to me that Andy Holtby was soon in search of another car after having far too hastily disposed of his own and then finding himself in the points lead! What did come as a bit of a shock, was the news in the week following Hednesford that his ‘new’ car, was going to be John’s Merc, John having now got himself back into the position of being a world qualifier again. But as he’d explained earlier in the year (when he took all that time out waiting for the SLK after letting his Peugeot go), he’s never been all that bothered about making the World grid this year.

There was also a rumour floating about that Carl Boardley is ‘doing a Tigra’ for Billy Bonnar, although I believe Carl mentioned this a while ago, and I think it is Carl’s ‘other’ car, the one that was the test-bed for the Duratec engine. Don’t shoot me if that’s wrong though, and it’s a completely new motor!

We’ve been awaiting the debut of former Spedeworth 2.0 driver Steve Burrows for a wee while now, and this was the day he finally showed up. He came with a beautifully turned out car, that rarest of rare things in this day and age, a brand new Peugeot 206!  Steve had apparently bought the frame about three years ago, but has only recently got around to completing the build. With its complicated stickered graphics advertising Steve’s Blockade firm, it really looked the part too.

If we’ve been waiting a while for Burrows to come out, we seem to have been waiting forever for Dickie Burtenshaw to finally stop hiding his light under a bushel in Outlaws and get with the programme!  For him too, this was that day, and his plain blue Colt graced a World Series grid for the first time. It will be interesting indeed to see what he achieves over the coming months.

Winnie Holtmanns had been planning on having another race in England, but a try-out at Arena had left him with a blown engine and therefore no reason to take the car off the trailer at Foxhall, unfortunately.

There was a new and very much JPS Lotus-inspired colour scheme for Lee Wood’s 206cc, while Hughie Weaver’s decision not to race saw son and 2.0 red top Kym Weaver make his Nationals debut instead.

Despite the merest traces of a drizzle in the air at Foxhall in the morning, the main part of the day was going to be proper bank holiday weather, i.e. sunny and bloody hot! There was a big crowd on the terraces too, to witness the opening heat, which was the first chance for anybody to try the new areas of tar on the partly resurfaced track in anger.

Luke Armiger clearly liked it as he managed to reverse so much of the bad luck he’s suffered in recent outings to lead from flag to flag.  The man I’d half expected to win all three from where he was starting, Andy Steward, spent a long time working on getting past Wood to put himself into second but a long way adrift of the leader.

Enjoying the new surface just as much as Armiger though, was Carl Boardley, the world champion also putting recent poor outings behind him as he overtook at will all round the track. Eventually of course, this charge towards the front brought him up on Doughnut with four laps to run. It was like “world final replay” all over again, with a distinct sense of déjà vu as Boardley went straight down the outside coming off turn two, but this time there was no contact and Carl was past before they’d completed the traverse of the back straight. He was never going to catch Armiger in the time available though, Luke taking a rare and therefore very welcome win.

Boardley had obviously just been warming up in the first heat however! After a demon start by Colin Smith didn’t quite come off in terms of giving him the early lead, Wood and Steward were dicing again, but this time for the top slot. They hadn’t been at it for long though, when Mikey Godfrey had a half spin going through the far bend, getting collected hard by Lee Pepper – in fact, I was surprised he was able to continue – and then Jeff Simpson, Mikey and Slim carrying on into the wall to spark off a caution.

With all of them able to rejoin, they set off again, with Steward leading by this stage. But very soon it was all eyes on Boardley who was blitzing through the pack, making it all look just too easy. At one point he passed four cars in the space of a lap, and we’re not talking about rank outsiders either in Gavin Murray, Chris Haird, Colin Smith and Jason Kew.

With Carl obviously not just dialled into the new surface but claiming it for his own, no one else had any answer to his attacking outside drive, even Steward offered no resistance when the # 41 appeared in his mirrors. By the time the 3 Lap board was out, Carl had audibly relaxed, and sounded like he’d shifted into top gear going down the straights, and on a trailing throttle into the bargain.

Sadly, pressure of MN deadlines and other stuff going on, meant that I had to deny Nick Thomas’ request for a roving mike interview on this occasion. Sorry Nick!  But I did offer up the opinion that if the track drives like that in July, everybody else (who isn’t Boardley) might as well stay home. Am I being premature? Has Carl peaked too soon? Will he be tempted/suckered into using the Merc? We shall see!!

Another demon start, this time by Armiger, looked like it had set Luke up to do heat one all over again in the third heat, but he was soon forced to let Tony Moss and the hard pressing Smith through.

Moss and Smith disputed the lead hard, with Colin trying several stabs up the outside. Although Moss was making the pass anything but easy, the Z4 didn’t look like it was handling that well either and clobbered the wall on the penultimate lap handing second spot to Jay Austin. Although consideration had been given in the box to the fact that Tony might well have been blocking, viewing of video evidence still saw him confirmed as the winner.

Austin had looked pretty quick himself in the closing stages, prompting John Holtby to comment that he too, seemed to have found the ‘sweet spot’ on the track.  His brother, by contrast, had found no such thing in the Merc and was heard muttering the words “dust cart” under his breath in the pits. Apparently, the car was so loose going through the 3-4 turns, Andy had become convinced several times that someone was pushing him, only to look in his mirror and find no-one there!

Lee Wood set the early pace in the final, pestered by Armiger who took it up down the inside going through turn one. Armiger didn’t have long to enjoy the lead though, with Moss and Smith breathing down his neck and dicing with each other. So hard was their battle that they eventually got into a clinch at turn three, allowing the fast closing Gomm to dart past.

Boardley didn’t seem to have the devastating pace of his second heat in the final, not that he wasn’t going forwards, just not quite at the same remarkable speed as earlier.

So with Gomm having the bit well and truly between his teeth now, he rapidly chased down Armiger, finally going by down the outside of the back stretch to seal the win and with it, the points lead. Without checking, I think that may well be for the first time ever in his career.  Armiger had faded to fifth by the end, with Steward, Dick Hillard – now second in the points – and yes, Boardley, following Gomm home.  It must be said that I thought this was the best meeting of the year so far, weather-wise, atmosphere-wise, contact-wise – certainly it was the one I’ve enjoyed the most anyway. Graham Brown
Heat one: 519,41,198,333,278,72,427,95,303,844,734,61, 155,14,209,(970),116,85
Heat two: 41,198,911,303,115(-2),95, 491(-2),31,844,155,174,(74),100,734,192(-2),209,333,3,27
Heat three: 192,427,278,491,519, 115,31,72(-2),174,911,3,14,85,(970),100,61,(74),116
Final: 278,198,31,41,519,95, 491(-4),3,911,427,14,303,333,155,209,72,844,115,100
(100 = Dickie Burtenshaw, 116 = Steve Burrows, 209 = Kym Weaver)

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 14
Holtby versus Holtby!
Hednesford, Monday May 4th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  After the three heats all featured different winners, a final bedevilled by crashes and caution periods eventually came down to the two Holtby brothers to decide it between themselves, with John giving his SLK its debut victory.

There were 34 starters for this one including a couple of visitors, although no continentals this time around – presumably May 4th isn’t a bank holiday elsewhere in Europe. There were two interlopers from the Irish scene however, with James O’Shea back for another outing this side of the water, and honorary Irishman Mike Oliver making the trek from Wales for a nowadays rare UK appearance, his first of 2009.

Iain Grayson was also out for his first meeting of the year.

There were a couple of ‘odd’ cars in the pits as well, which were attracting a bit of attention from interested parties. One was a brand new SLK in all white gel coat colours. When I first saw it, the ghostly looking Merc was surrounded by three figures, namely Mike, John and Andy Holtby, which immediately got me thinking that maybe this was why Andy had given his Tigra the chop.  But they were merely taking a look. Andy promptly fessed up that he was already regretting having sold his usual mount (although he was going to be driving it at the meeting for the last time) and that the idea of a Merc didn’t appeal to him. Or at least, not as a full time proposition anyway.  It now looks as though John has given up his ride for the next few meetings in favour of Andy driving the # 6 car, a situation brought on, no doubt, by the fact that Andy ended the day as the new points leader!

I don’t think I can ever recall such a situation occurring before - the points leader selling up and ostensibly leaving himself without a car to pursue the rest of the championship chase in -  although I do remember Ricky Hunn flogging his number one car almost on the eve of a world final some years ago.  Anyway, it will apparently be the SLK which bears the number 61 for the rest of the rounds, with completion of Andy’s new Tigra (not originally due out until the National championship) having been brought forward to world final time.

As for the all-white Merc, that was there to be collected by Mark Heatrick and crew for a journey to Northern Ireland, although I guess it won’t be all that long before we’re seeing it again.

The other car generating attention in the pits was the Audi TT formerly owned by Scots racer Steve Mannet. By the way, the car, still bearing Mannet’s 303 numbers, generated some confusion by being parked just a few yards away from the Simpson bus! The Audi has been purchased by a completely new driver to NHR’s, but as he’s already ticked the ‘no publicity’ box, I suppose I’d better keep my own counsel about who it is.

There had been rain in the air from mid-morning, a situation which showed no signs of improving as start time neared. In fact, ‘spitting’ was just about as bad as it got, but there is still heavy spitting and light spitting if you see what I mean. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, it never really stopped trying to rain all afternoon.

Willie Hardie looked to be in some sort of trouble even before the off, his car trailing smoke throughout the warm ups, but it transpired that this was merely a problem with the gearbox breather on the Tigra. It was returnee Grayson who set the early pace in the opening heat, chased by itinerant Scots Gary Black and Graeme Callender.

There was a fair bit of three wide racing going on in the early laps in amongst the pack, as Callender took over the lead from Grayson going into the East bend.  With Black retiring from third, Mark Edwards was left to dispute the slot with Jay Austin and Chris Haird, Mark running wide through the West bend to let the other pair through. With Haird by-passing Austin into the same corner only a couple of laps later, this was far from over, Haird tearing up to the leader and immediately trying a big sweep round the outside in order to take the lead.

Callender wasn’t going that slowly though, and Chris found that he couldn’t quite get the job done. In fact, he’d allowed Austin to re-pass down the inside, Gavin Murray, James Jamieson and Ralph Sanders all coming along in his wake.

What this boiled down to was a six car lead battle towards the finish and quite a finish it was shaping up to be. But sadly it was all to end in tears when Austin and Sanders collided with each other and the wall, the race finishing under yellows and three laps early. The result was taken from the last completed lap incidentally, which is why Austin and Sanders are both still in the places.

Mikey Godfrey was slow away from row two and found himself quickly swamped by those behind in heat two. Grayson had another go at leading but was soon overtaken by Darron Lewis.  Lewis led convincingly (it was over a quarter of a lap at one stage) right up until another caution, thrown after a shunt involving Jason Kew and Gavin Murray. Kew got somewhat knocked about in this little lot, an incident which led to Jamieson’s disqualification for causing Kew to spin in the first place.

The clean up left a lot of dust and mess along the home straight, made no better by the spotty rain suddenly intensifying just as the green came back out again. Although it wasn’t ultimately going to matter to him, Jamieson’s car went sick at that exact same moment, putting him out anyway.

Billy Bonnar had been running a distant second to Lewis before the stoppage, but the re-start saw both Holtbys get the jump on him. The slippery stuff clearly suited John H and the black Merc, as he switched to the wide outside without fussing too much about his brother or Lee Pepper, who were both close behind and looking pretty sharp themselves. But it was an intelligent move by John, who’d judged that the track was now wet enough to be treated as though it was actually raining, making it a good plan to put himself wide of all the oil and rubber that was no doubt lurking on the usual racing line.

The move swept him to the front and apparently to his first win behind a three pointed star. But a couple of earlier incidences of contact were enough to get him dropped two places, handing the win back to Lewis, who’d just – and only just – beaten Pepper across the line. These three were followed home by Malcolm Blackman, who’d come on really strong once the asphalt got slippery – nothing new there then.

After slackening for a bit the rain had worsened again for the third heat, which made the track surface even dicier. Willing to risk it though, was the determined Jason Kew. While Jason had been getting a clean bill of health from the track doctor (a requirement at all Incarace tracks after any driver has been hurt in a race stopping incident, if they wish to drive again at that meeting), his crew and friends had got the car back into a race-able condition.

Former Classics racer Lee Wood made the running this time while Black and Bonnar had a battle of the Scots for second. Bonnar got the best of that, only to lose out to Colin Smith, Smith and the Z4 being another combination that seemed to be enjoying the less-than-perfect traction available.

But before Colin could get down to really chasing the leader, they were all brought up short by yet another yellow flag, this time for a crash at the end of the back straight.  Callender and Hughie Weaver had collided and then been collected by Carl Boardley and Jeff Simpson.

Really, the old adage about “If it wasn’t for bad luck he wouldn’t be having any luck at all” just about says it all for Boardley’s year so far. There’s no doubt that he’s just as quick, just as committed, as he ever was. But it seems that almost every time he gets on one of his characteristic outside charges, he ends up in someone else’s accident. I’ve lost count of how often this has happened and it’s really no wonder that the 41 crew were so despondent.

Following the restart, Wood swiftly lost the lead to Smith. But Colin seemed to be having the same problem he’d experienced at the previous meeting (that of the car getting slower as the race progressed) so he in turn had to let the hard pressing Chris Haird through for victory. It was Holtbys two and three in this one, Andy heading John home this time, as Smith slid back to fourth.

31 cars for the final looked as though it might be more than just a little exciting. Well, I suppose that’s one word for it.

Ken Marriott was the first to show, pestered initially by Grayson before Iain had to start paying attention to his mirror as Bonnar and John Holtby appeared in it. Whatever plans any of them were making about winning had to go on hold as Luke Armiger and Weaver clashed at the end of the back straight, taking Edwards with them and straight on into the infield embankment. That had shortened the front of the 206 considerably as could be seen when it had been dug out and dragged away.

What’s more, the re-start didn’t exactly get far, as Sanders rotated on the West bend and stopped in mid-track. He was stranded there with no chance to either get off the banking or face the right way with a steady stream of cars bearing down on Ralph as he looked straight up at the grand stand.

The race resumed with Marriott still heading Bonnar, Grayson and Holtby (J). Bonnar had been going well all afternoon, and now moved up to challenge Marriott for the lead, going by down the inside into the West bend. But with 20 laps still to run the yellows were flying again, this time for O’Shea, who looked to have spun backwards into the West bend wall, severely deranging his wing and the back of the car generally.

Billy managed to get a real flyer for this latest re-start, enough of a flyer to get him black crossed for it anyway!  While Bonnar was doing his best to capitalise on that getaway, John Holtby got past Marriott not long before his brother followed suit.

John was soon up with the leader and darted past down the inside into the East bend and immediately commenced pulling clear. That might have been that, but yes, you’ve guessed it – the yellows were about to come out again. A fairly heated minor places scrap involving Colin Gomm, Kew, Smith, Blackman, Murray, Matt Simpson and Phil Spinks had boiled over, with Murray making contact with Blackman coming off the East bend. This sent Malcolm spinning backwards to the wall, taking Murray, Simpson and Spinks with him. It was also subsequently to get Murray disqualified.

Nine to go. By now, no-one was counting on seeing the chequered flag without seeing another yellow – or even red – one first. But as it happened, the race ran green all the way to the finish from this point.

That final caution had naturally put Andy Holtby right up with Bonnar, Andy overtaking and proceeding to chase hard after his brother.  With five laps still to run, it looked as though it really could be Holtby versus Holtby for the win, but John was simply too far ahead and it was still the black SLK that held sway at flag fall. Still, as things have turned out, at least Andy will no doubt be glad to have seen that what is about to become his ride for a while is no easy meat when the chips are down!

With the brothers having claimed the lion’s share of the Image Wheels sponsorship on offer, it was left to Bonnar to claim the third spot, Billy narrowly managing to fend off Dick Hillard as they raced to the line.  Graham Brown
Heat one: 871,115,427,305,95,734,3,41,45,31,303,155,911,191,72, 519,285,(57),192,27
Heat two: 285,155,6(-2),911,303,61,85,844, 14,45,191,(74),734,333
Heat three: 115,61,6,491,31,844,333,72,85,14,174,3,(74),210,192,16
Final: 6,61,844,31,155,305,278,174,72,85,491,3, 192,911,303,14,2,95,210,734,27

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 13
First blood for Bee-Em
Ipswich, Saturday April 25th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Despite running out of petrol while leading one race, Colin Smith still managed to put together a heat and final double for his BMW Z4 in what was only the third outing for the still new car.

It was good to see that, credit crunch, recession, or whatever you want to call it notwithstanding, entries continue to hold up for now at least, with a stout 33 cars on hand for this one. This number included several very welcome guests, although continental racers Laurens vd Velde and John vd Bosch are here so often these days, they almost don’t count as visitors! It was good to see them back again nevertheless, joined for this one by ROI racers Tom Casey and James O’Shea.

Tom had decided to give the following day’s Tipperary meeting a miss in order to get some Ipswich track time in with his new Merc, while James has expressed a wish for some while, to race in England once his ban had expired.

If the previous Foxhall meet had been something of a crash-fest, then this one was going to be more of a penalty-party, with Deane Wood – assisted by Mark Paffey – stewarding and obviously determined to stamp down hard on any naughtiness whatsoever.

Darron Lewis looked well on course to win the first heat for most of the race, after making a demon getaway. The former Legends star was being helped in his quest by the places-dicing going on behind him, involving at different times, Mikey Godfrey, John Holtby and Neil Stimson.

It was Stimson who finally got the best of this and was eating into the leader’s buffer zone very fast indeed, when Lewis saw the thing he really needed least - a late race caution.

This was brought on by Lee Wood spinning to a stop in a dodgy place, although it also provided an opportunity for James Jamieson to limp away from his equally dodgy parking place on the outside exit from turn four, where he’d become stranded by a knackered front wheel and tyre.

Even if Stimson hadn’t been in contention for the win before the stoppage, he certainly was once they restarted. Of course, the closing up process had brought Holtby right into the picture again too, and the trio had quite a scrap as the lap boards started to count down. Stimson and Holtby both got past Lewis, with Neil holding on at the front to the flag.

To save wading through all the copious penalties in each race, I’ll just add a summary to the results section.

Having got his SLK home in second in the opening heat, Holtby was clearly up for more of the same as the major places fight in the early going here involved Godfrey again, going better than at any meeting so far this year, Colin Smith, Holtby and Lewis.

Anyone able to tear their eyes away from this dispute up front could have enjoyed watching Phil Spinks giving it his all round the outside as usual. He wasn’t the only one on the longer trip round the oval however, as Holtby too, had decided that the Merc had the grip and had a go at Godfrey by that route. But John was not able to get the job done, letting Lewis back into the frame. This was turning into a really absorbing scrap, with Holtby and Lewis finally making their way past Godfrey just before the yellows were out for another airing, Chris Haird and Luke Armiger having collided on the pit bend.

Haird had gone in very hard and backwards, never a good thing for anyone’s neck or head. A lengthy delay while the medics tended to Chris, eventually saw him recover sufficiently from his KO to limp the car to the infield, although it was to be the last time he drove anywhere for this evening.

If the racing had been absorbing prior to the hiatus, it was even more interesting after the restart, as Colin Smith’s leading Z4 was now under pressure from Holtby’s SLK, the first time the new cars have squared up to one another for real and for the lead. The two battled for the win in a proper hard-but-fair hot rod manner, with Smith just and only just managing to stay ahead at the line as the ‘new-shape’ Nationals finished one and two.

The third heat turned out to be the most dramatic race of the night. It took a while to get going though, with an immediate complete restart called for after a first lap clash between Hughie Weaver and Lee Wood had left them straddling turns 3-4. Ken Marriott had led that first charge and was in command again as they set off for another try, until he went spinning at turn three this time and got collected head on by Spinks.

Smith, Stimson and Wood had been close behind Marriott at the time of his rotation, but with nobody too sure how much of a ‘train effect’ may have been in play, no penalties came out of this incident.

On the ‘third time lucky’ attempt, it was Wood who initially grabbed the top spot, but it wasn’t long before Smith had seen enough daylight to sneak the Bee-Em past down the inside going into turn one.

‘Smiffy’ then set about putting a huge gap between him and the rest as fast as possible, Colin clearly having already worked out what was just beginning to dawn on anyone else who was paying attention; the Z4 starts fast, but fades just as fast once half distance has been and gone.

It was, eventually, Stimson and Ralph Sanders who set off after the leader, with Sanders slipping past Stimson along the way to really begin closing the gap. As the laps began to dwindle, Smith’s lead dwindled even faster and it wasn’t long before Ralph was sitting behind him. The Z4 was spitting impressive trails of flame from the exhaust every time Colin backed off into a corner, and I did jokingly tell him later that we might have to change the rule book to make threatening following cars with being set on fire illegal as a method of keeping the lead!

Sanders was clearly up for having some of his paint burnt off however, and piled the pressure on as they neared the finish, very nearly going by on the pit bend as Colin slid sideways for a moment. But Willie Hardie was right there too and darted under Sanders, the cars touching and Sanders slowing in clouds of billowing smoke, the rear bodywork of his car having got punched up onto the tyres. As if that wasn’t drama enough, moments later the leader’s car went very sick as they came to the last lap, the Z4 having sputtered out of gas, handing the victory to Hardie.

Stimson got home for another good result in second, the race finishing just in time for Neil, a shocker bolt breaking as he took the flag which left the car with virtually no steering and dragging its belly noisily across the track in a shower of sparks on the slowing down lap.

“We didn’t want too much petrol in it, the car’s too heavy as it is!” Smith quipped later. But although the team had obviously added enough petrol to go the distance in the final, it was equally obvious now that the car was getting slower the longer any race went on. This isn’t much of a criticism when a new car goes as well as this one does, on the amount of development it hasn’t had, but clearly Smiffy’ was going to have to really go for it in the first half of the feature if he wanted to add a second win to his tally.

Therefore, he couldn’t afford to waste any time at the outset not being in the lead, but this was just what he was forced to do by Godfrey, who was looking more and more confident as the night went on. Mikey stuck to his guns and the inside line for several laps until Smith finally made an outside pass stick and tore off into the distance.

The rest of the race was going to be interesting just to see how far away from the rest Colin could get before they started reeling him in, and who was going to be doing the reeling. With Godfrey being left behind fast, it obviously wasn’t going to be him, but I reckon you’d have got pretty good odds on who turned out to be Smith’s pursuer. Step right up, Hughie Weaver. He might not have done that much in the heats, but he was right on the pace here, leaving Stimson behind – no mean feat on its own – and rapidly dealing with Godfrey.

Ignoring all the incidents going on around the place (Lee Wood had his latest spin exiting turn four, Matt Simpson had hit something or another and was limping round with smoke trailing from the right front, while vd Bosch and vd Velde had somehow got together with each other and the infield marker barrels, scattering them about – shades of 1960’s Brafield!) Weaver was definitely stalking the leader now.

Hughie gradually put the rest - headed by a duel between Godfrey and Stimson - a quarter of a lap behind him and was inexorably shutting down Smith’s lead, which had been almost half a lap at one point. The nearer the finish they got, the faster Weaver was closing in, the gap coming down to less than a quarter of a lap with five to go. Shortly before that, Gavin Murray and Carl Boardley had got together along the back straight in an incident that looked at least vaguely reminiscent of the famous Boardley/Steward clash in that world final. It had similar results too, except that both men were eliminated this time.

At the showing of the last lap board, Weaver was so very nearly in touch with Smith, but not nearly enough to change the eventual outcome. Peter Carter Transport added some very welcome extra prize money as part of their sponsorship deal, as well as very nice and unusual trophies, much of which – both money and trophies – ended up with a suitably cheerful Colin Smith! Graham Brown.
Heat one: 271,6,285,734,95,41,27,3,174,61(-2),155(-2),911(-2),31,844,210,(961),(74),(66),427,192
61 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 427. 155 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 61. 911 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 3. 333 black flagged for passing the pace car during caution period.
Heat two: 491,6,285,27,85,303,41,278(-2),155,14,844,31,192(-2),305,68(-2),(78),(66),72
192 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 844. 68 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 519. 278 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 155. 174 black crossed & dropped two places for consistently failing to hold a racing line.
Heat three: 72,271,95,278,734,303,14,61(-2),85,911(-2),333,3,(74),427,(78)
911 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 303. 61 dropped two places for slowing down too soon after the chequered flag & not ‘racing till the reds’.
Final: 491,210,72,27,174,3,278,14,85,155,305,192,31,844,(78),285(-2),333,911,(74)
285 black crossed & dropped two places for contact on 6. 95 disqualified for causing crash with 41.
Martin Kingston’s photos in the GALLERY

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 12
Lewis lucks out as Spinks collects
Ipswich, Monday April 13th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  In an afternoon of mixed fortunes for the Nationals newcomer, Darron Lewis always looked quick but continually caught the eye of the steward. Lewis won the final on the road but suffered a two place penalty, handing victory to perennial hard charger Phil Spinks.

In sharp contrast to Northampton, the sun shone on Foxhall to provide a first pleasantly warm afternoon at first, later on, a muggy one. And it was just as well the rapidly rising fog of the evening didn’t arrive earlier in the day!

A few ‘parish notices’ concerning the entry here. John van den Bosch and Winnie Holtmanns were still in England and happily, still racing too. Stuart Carter had declared himself less than overjoyed with the performance of his car’s engine at Northampton, and had managed to arrange a loan of Steve Thompson’s motor and transmission, which he had installed for Ipswich. On the subject of engine swaps, Chris Haird had been forced to source another unit after his spectacular blow up on the Friday and he showed up with an ex-Richard Spavins lot installed.

There was one newcomer also, in the shape of Lee Wood with a 206cc.This is the same Lee Wood (racing under the same number) that used to do Classic Hot Rods with that beautiful black and gold Anglia, not the Lea Wood that used to race. Confusingly though, I’m told that Lee’s car is an ex-Greg (brother of Lea) Wood car!  Don’t take that as gospel, but I’m pleased to say Lee’s chosen to stick with the black and gold colours wherever it came from.

In truth, I think we’d better start to talk about the racing by saying this wasn’t a great meeting. Oh, it had a pretty good final to be sure, but there was too much bashing and crashing, too many yellow flags, and one too few races – at least, given what we consider to be the ‘norm’ for Nationals.

Luke Armiger set the pace in heat one, tracked closely by Ralph Sanders. Lewis was one of several drivers among the packed field keen to try the outside trip but it was the inside that gave Sanders the lead as he drove under Armiger through turn three.

Willie Hardie took a pit bend spin after the merest touch from Haird, who backed off so much afterwards that he nearly stopped, but it didn’t save the 72 car from rotation. Neil Stimson was another having a good go up the outside, but every time he tried it, he seemed to lose a place rather than gain one!

The first caution period arrived when Spinks and Mikey Godfrey had a coming together on the pit bend, Andy Holtby and Dick Hillard spinning in the aftermath while some passing car pretty much tore the wing off Hillard’s car.

Holtby pulled out just as the race went green again, while Sanders pulled safely clear at the front, leaving Armiger to try and fend off the rest, most of whom seemed to be queuing up behind him. It never looked like anything good was going to come of this, and just as Tony Moss went for it up Luke’s outside, the rest all seemed to drive into one another somehow. Lewis went spinning, as did John Holtby and Colin Gomm, these two impacting with each other pretty hard. The black Merc didn’t look quite so immaculate after this but, more importantly, Colin had what seemed to be a case of sideways whiplash and had to take a trip to Ipswich Hospital. Thankfully, he was back at the track by the end of the meeting complaining of no more than aches, pains and bruising.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Colin Smith arrived on the scene just as all this was going off and was presented with the choice of hitting one of the spun or spinning cars very hard, or deliberately turning into the wall. He chose the wall, aiming to “…spin in and just kiss it with the front to stop myself”. His last minute avoidance all worked fine, except for the kiss turned into more of a full-on snog, and bent the frame, putting the BMW back in the lorry for the day.

With the chequered flag only four laps away at the time of this mess, the race as called, not that the early finish probably made any difference to the major places. Something that did was Lewis being disqualified from fourth for several instances of contact but mostly for a violent assault on Carter’s back bumper.

Heat two was also to be cursed with yellow flags but before that it was the same drivers leading again, with Armiger in front to begin with until Sanders got by. Mark you, that was only after a three wide moment on the first lap that had Godfrey leading for a few yards before Armiger and Sanders got going.

The man to watch here was undoubtedly Spinks, who was putting together a great run. He was already up to third when another series of incidents broke out. Holtby pulled the Merc up on the back straight – it looked suspiciously like he’d tagged the wall – Haird and Lee Pepper got together in a clinch at the far turn, and then Godfrey went spinning, Lewis going round too, and Mark Fuller and Moss also getting involved. The waved yellows came as no surprise here.

To call the re-start ‘untidy’ is probably being too polite. Certainly, Sanders got a flyer with Armiger not far back, but Spinks seemed to be caught totally unawares. It wasn’t long before Phil was back in the groove however, zipping past Armiger to go second with what looked like every chance of chasing down the leader. Sanders has been at this game a long time though and had clearly perceived the danger posed by a rapidly looming traffic jam in front of him. He picked up the pace at just the right time, darted past a couple of the easier looking back markers and gave his pursuer just too much to do in the remaining two laps.

As if there hadn’t been enough going on, an “off the ball” incident between Jason Kew and Sammy Shudall after the race provided something for an NHRPA meeting to discuss later in the week.

The final was easily the best race of the day. Mikey Godfrey led for many laps with Lewis and Stimson snapping at his heels. Sanders didn’t look like winning this one however, as a wide run up the outside saw him railroaded backwards a whole heap of places.

With almost the entire field now in a train that covered most of a lap, Spinks was yet again, the man on the outside. He was making ground too, but nobody seemed to be able to manage either a breakthrough or a break away.

Eventually, Godfrey left just too much daylight on his inside going into the pit bend and the resulting challenge from Lewis saw the Saxo man spin out.  He wasn’t the only one either, with Jason Kew going around at the other end, shortly before Hillard, Carl Boardley, Jeff Simpson, Malcolm Blackman and Jay Austin all ended up in an undignified heap at the end of the back straight. Definite grounds for yet another caution period.

Blackman had to be towed off with significant left front damage, while Simpson – minus his wing – and most of the others were able to join in the restart.

Matters had hardly resumed when Armiger and Hughie Weaver tangled and ended up in the wall at the far turn. But up at the sharp end of the field, the scene was now set for the best racing of the day.

Lewis and Tony Moss proceeded to fight tooth and nail for the lead, with Lewis in front but permanently under pressure. An intriguing dice this, with the two NHR ‘newbies’ really having a go. Moss was up for it on the outside too, and shot through as Lewis found himself momentarily obstructed by the back marking Armiger. Darron wasn’t giving in easily though, and came back hard at Moss. The pair touched, both men going into a huge swoon along the home straight although fortunately, the cars were fishtailing in different directions at different times!

By the time they’d gathered things up again Lewis had the lead back and Moss had dropped down to fifth, as Spinks saw his chance and dived in to attack Lewis. But Phil had Carter and Sanders – both men going better and better as the race wound down – right behind him. And although Lewis’ car looked a bit loose in the closing stages, it was never loose enough to tempt Spinks into an outright challenge.

So Lewis won that battle too, only to lose to the steward after the flag for the earlier incident with Godfrey, a two place penalty to the on-the-road winner also elevating Carter to third as well as Spinks to the position of East Anglian champion. I should also mention that Haird Motorsport generously provided a grand’s worth of vouchers across the first six places, so Lewis at least collected some of that as a measure of compensation. Graham Brown
Heat one: 734,519,192,(285),85,278,271,115,155,6,14,444,68,911,41,174
Heat two: 734,14,85,41,271,210,519(-2),192,61,72,(174),427,3,911,31,305
Final: 14,85,285(-2),734,192,115,41,155,271,68,31,72,3,305,95

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 11
JJ’s wet win
Northampton, Friday April 10th 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Scot James Jamieson overcame the very rainy conditions as well as the rest of the field to take the final victory at NIR on Good Friday.

Although the weather did not entirely ruin the racing, I suspect the day will remain mostly notable for it being the first time English fans had an opportunity to see both a BMW Z4 and a Merc SLK in action.

John Holtby’s Mercedes SLK looked absolutely stunning in its mainly black livery overlaid with prismatic (do they still call it that?) silver, fluorescent red and blue sign writing. Unsurprisingly, it was the centre of attention in the pits all day. As this was the first time the car had turned a wheel in anger, John elected to run off the back of the grid throughout, although he still managed to both christen a front wing on the fence and score at least some points.

The long awaited BMW Z4 of Colin Smith also attracted plenty of attention. Colin having declared the car fit for purpose following a shake down at Arena, he took up his proper grid position and twice brought the car home in the points.

As for the rest, John vd Bosch was back again following on from his Aldershot outing, while Winnie Holtmanns was having his first UK event of ’09. Laurens vd Velde was due to return as well, but was forced to cancel after encountering ferry booking problems.

Finally on the entry front, Scot Gary Black was making his National Hot Rod debut in a car which appeared to be painted to resemble a cow! Smartly enough turned out though for all that, and another welcome travelling addition to the southern scene from north o’ the border.

The opening heat was the only race to take place more or less in the dry and even then, it was still something of a half-and-half track following earlier showers. Oddly enough, Ralph Sanders was still pondering whether to run two-and-two tyres right before going out, and eventually did plump for just that. It turned out to be a smart move…

It was not Ralph that took the initiative to start with though, but Hughie Weaver, Ralph tracking him in second at a safe distance but near enough to have a go when he felt like it.  As Smiffy battled to keep the loose looking Z4 in check and one or two others either spun or pulled up, Sanders moved up onto the leader’s bumper and applied the pressure until he got through down the inside of the pit bend.

Shortly after that, John Holtby tangled with David Brooks and slid into the fence between turns 1-2, fortunately without doing much more than removing a small piece of wing from the right front of the SLK. A couple of laps after that Chris Haird blew his engine, retiring to the infield with flames belching from underneath, which were quickly dealt with by an athletic marshal.

Having looked like hanging onto a fairly safe second, just under four laps from home Weaver got tagged by the back marking Tony Moss as they rounded the pit bend and spun out. This incident subsequently led to Moss’ disqualification.

It was raining hard for heat two which seemed to suit eventual winner Sammy Shudall as he fairly quickly overhauled early leader Russ Wilcox, going ahead as they raced pass Holtmanns one either side. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of spinning going on in this one, too many to list here! Equally unsurprisingly, if Shudall liked the wet, then Matt Simpson liked it even more as he carved his way through from the back of the pack.

Jay Austin certainly wasn’t hanging about and Simpson made fairly short work of passing him too, in a confident three wide moment that took the 303 car to third. Wilcox couldn’t resist for long either and Shudall’s lead was clearly under threat as they came up for the last lap board. One more bend, never mind one more lap, would have been enough to get Simpson the win, but in the end he ran out of time and crossed the line almost alongside Shudall in the closest finish of the afternoon.

Shudall looked all set to repeat the exercise on their third outing, taking the lead from the off this time, as a rare clinch between Carl Boardley and Andy Holtby exiting turn two saw the pair locked together in a time wasting T-bone situation.

Shudall fairly quickly got rid of his pursuit in this one – chiefly led by Weaver – but when he allowed the chasing Boardley to unlap himself, he lost a bit of time and rhythm that put Hughie right back in the hunt. Sammy had to work hard to keep in front but succeeded in fending Weaver off in the closing stages.

Shudall and Weaver were at it again for the early lead in the final, after Wilcox went spinning right on the drop of the green flag. Their dice raged on, being joined by Jamieson and then Austin as time went on. With a rejuvenated Boardley rushing to get involved too, this was shaping up into a really interesting race until the yellows flew when Matt Simpson crashed hard on the back straight.

Opinions varied about who caused this and how it came about, and it took a while for the seriously wrecked Tigra to be dragged clear of the circuit.

Back under green, Jamieson quickly hit the front and spent the remainder of the race making sure he stayed safely clear of a hard charging Boardley. Carl seemed to waste a bit of time getting past the backmarking Black when hostilities resumed, had to work hard at passing Austin down the outside and even harder at taking Weaver. By the time he’d done all that, Jamieson’s flight at the front had done the damage and he was safely on his way to the win with three laps still to go.

Incidentally, the Ludlow ‘bonus awards’ of Most Committed Driver and Most Entertaining Driver went to Matt Simpson (who had certainly been very committed all afternoon) and John Holtby, the latter on the basis that absolutely everybody had provided great entertainment in less than ideal conditions, but he’d done it in the prettiest car!

Simpson’s commitment had enabled him to eke out his slender one point World Series lead (going into the meeting) to a much wider margin by the end of the day. As he now has to miss Ipswich (not because the car got smashed, he was never going to be at Foxhall anyway) will it be enough to keep him in front? I think Blackman will be points leader by Monday night, but I’ve been wrong before and Gavin Murray may have other ideas. Watch this space! Graham Brown
Heat one: 734,427,41,305,174,3,911,278,31,491,27,601,(467),6,(192).
Heat two: 444,303,427,911,219,61,14,72,85,95,6,155,(66),285,27,192,68, 601,16.
Heat three: 444,210,305,303,3,491,72,31,95,174,14,61,41,155,(66).
Final: 305,41,210,427,444,285,72,601,911,61,95,3,192,14,31,85,278, 155,174,6,(467).
Points & places scored by visiting drivers 66 & 467 discounted, all others move up.
192 disqualified from heat one for contact with 210.

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 10
Fuller makes his mark at Aldershot
Aldershot, Sunday 29th March 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Mark Fuller celebrated his transition from 2.0 Hot Rods to the National variety by taking a heat and final double as well as the QRS Southern championship in the first world series round at the Rushmoor Arena.

Not a huge entry for this one, but maybe that was just as well, with nobody too sure how exactly a full-on world series round was going to pan out on the still new track. Yes, the trial meeting last year resulted in some excellent racing – notably in the final – but there was only a relatively small field of cars and no points at stake. Much more serious racing with a 40-car field might just have proven to be a bit too full-on!

The drivers too, had obviously been giving the matter some thought, with Willie Hardie not bringing the Merc, Ralph Sanders not bringing the Tigra but his cc, and Colin Gomm reverting to the Colt rather than his 206.

In the end, 25 cars was probably about right, with welcome first appearances of the year this side of the water from John vd Bosch and Laurens vd Velde adding to that number. Tony Moss – who enjoyed some success in his 2.0 Spedeworth car on the day that the NHR’s first visited New Aldershot – was also having his first race outing of 2009.

The opening heat kicked off with Fuller leading but under pressure from Moss, whose rebuilt Tigra was looking pretty sharp. Moss took over the lead with two laps gone, but attracted what was to be a telling black cross for the manner of his pass.

The star men were finding the fairly tight confines of the new track something of a challenge, with Malcolm Blackman smacking the wall early on to leave his wing hanging awry for the rest of the distance.

By contrast, Carl Boardley was definitely the man to watch in the early going, passing car after car on an outside charge. This looked likely to carry him at least as far as second spot, if not the outright win, by the finish. But it all came to a sticky end when a touch with vd Bosch sent him spinning into retirement. It looked as though Carl might just have cut in a fraction of a second too soon on the 66 car at the end of the home straight, but after discussions between the two drivers and Paul Gerrard (stewarding), John admitted he had overshot his entry to the corner slightly, supporting Paul’s opinion that he was really the cause of the incident. Ultimately, this led to vd Bosch’s disqualification, while Moss’ earlier indiscretion saw him docked two places, handing Fuller the win.

Late in the race, Mikey Godfrey hit one of the pit bend marker tyres jolly hard, rendering the front of his superbly re-fettled Saxo needing significant attention.

Moss made no such mistake in the second outing and had extended his initial lead to a quarter of a lap by flag fall. He was helped out here by the race-long battle for second between Luke Armiger, Sammy Shudall and Hughie Weaver keeping them all too busy to do anything about the leader.

Jay Austin deserves a mention for pressing on to finish this one, despite crashing early on as he exited the pit bend, and going a lap down, he still got the car home for a couple of points.

Heat three turned out to be Shudall’s chance to shine. He took off fast and quickly pulled clear of the chasing Fuller. Very soon, Fuller found himself under pressure from James Jamieson, who was up the outside repeatedly and looking nothing like a man who’s mantra might well have been ‘no sleep since Aberdeen’, JJ having stopped off to race at Cowdenbeath on Saturday night and then, apparently, heading down to the Longhurst establishment for a setting up session before trotting off north again to Aldershot! Clearly James, you were born too late – you’d have loved the 1970’s…

Despite his efforts, James’ outside swoops only succeeded in letting Weaver past down the inside instead. Dave Brooks joined in their dice too, all of which allowed Fuller to pull clear. Then JJ and Brooks both managed to get past Weaver shortly before Hughie ended up in a three car heap on the pit bend with Boardley (who’d again been making great progress up to that point) and Godfrey.

A caution period for the crash closed everybody up and brought Jamieson right into contention now. With the green back out, Jamieson swiftly passed Fuller and was soon attacking Shudall’s lead, once again darting up the outside several times without actually managing to get the pass made.  This time, JJ’s bravery merely served to allow Fuller to re-pass. JJ took him back again. With two laps to run, and Andy Holtby and Chris Haird now rushing to join in the lead scrap as well, it was clear this was going to end much too soon.

It was still the race of the day and, in the end, far from being the easy win for Shudall that it had looked like early on.

The final had hardly started (Fuller leading) when a thoroughly blown engine in Colin Gomm’s Colt caused a few ‘offs’ at the troublesome and now oily pit turn and brought out the reds for a clean up and complete restart. Of the several cars that had slid off into the wall or each other (Dick Hillard and Lee Pepper had both suffered in this respect), Sanders was out for good. This enabled him to lend his Raceceiver unit to Godfrey, who’d been forced out of the original start when his R/C packed in.

Fuller again started strongly, blasting through the clouds of cement dust and fending off the attentions of Shudall and then Moss to build a significant lead.

Moss ran second all the way after that and then began to close in on Fuller again as the race went beyond half distance. The leader was actually in trouble, a flattening battery robbing him of top end power and making the car sound a bit ‘fluffy’ at times. Mark was also having to contend with raging toothache and had actually considered loading up and going home earlier in the afternoon. But he kept the ailing Citroen going just long enough, claiming afterwards that the car would not have made one more lap.

As Mark also built the motor in the Tony Moss car, he had reason to go home a great deal happier than he had been earlier. Quite apart from the toothache, his mechanic had failed to sort out the switch to British Summer Time, overslept and failed to arrive, and his generator had packed in into the bargain. Never mind, Mark. If you actually fit those Quantum Shocks the nice people at QRS awarded to the final winner, you’ll just have increased the value of your ‘cheapie’ car by about twenty five percent!  Nice one. Graham Brown
Heat one: 68,72,192(-2),67,519,278,718,155,95,174,911,27,734, (66)
Heat two: 192,519,210,278,14,444,61,95,911,85,31,115,78,734,427,305
Heat three: 444,305,68,(61),115,72,31,718,427,155,41,174,27,66,78
Final: 68,192,519,174,305,14,72,41,61,911,155,85,95,427,718,27
66 disqualified from heat one for contact with 41.
61 disqualified from heat three for contact with 67.

2009 Ludlow Motorsport World Series England round 09
Scot’s first blood in second city
Birmingham Wheels, Saturday 14th March 2009

Graham Brown reports:  Despite spinning out of the lead in the first heat, Scot David Newall kept the car resolutely facing the right way to win the final as the Nationals got back on the World Series trail at Birmingham Wheels.

Despite a couple of last minute cancellations, there were still 32 cars on hand for the opening event of the ’09 season, although this had dropped to 31 by start time. The ORC had mandated pre-meeting noise tests for the Nationals as part of the ongoing drive to reduce complaints from local residents, thus helping prevent track closures and other interference from officialdom of all sorts. Undoubtedly, what happened at Tipperary last year, and at Croft more recently, has helped concentrate people’s minds in this respect. The highly knowledgeable acoustics expert, John Grant, who hosted the recent ORC seminar at Derby on noise, was on hand to conduct the tests in a very efficient manner.

Now, while I’m fairly sure that the testing had little or nothing to do with it, Graeme Gordon’s Tigra began puffing blue smoke immediately afterwards (he had already been out in practice by then) and was soon declared unfit for any racing on this evening. This was a bit of a blow after coming all that way just for a few laps of practice, especially as the car had apparently been recently equipped with a new motor.

Whilst the arrival of Willie Hardie had been eagerly anticipated by some, it was the #72 Tigra that arrived, so there were still no SLK’s in evidence. Ricky Hunn was having his first run in the ex-Stroud Tigra though, suitably re-liveried in regulation yellow and red, while a completely new car/driver combo for NHR’s was former Legends racer Darron Lewis with his own superbly turned out black Tigra.

Ken Marriott had his new-to-him Tigra out for the first time, and very pretty it looked too in its highly effective red and white colour scheme. On that subject of colours, Ralph Sanders has now got the ex-Luscombe Tigra painted in his own more familiar Auto Dump hues.

It wasn’t all totally about Tigras on the new car front however, as Mark Fuller’s Saxo, as seen at the Ipswich test session, was about to make its race debut too.

Scot Graeme Callender was following up his late ’08 Birmingham appearance with a welcome early ’09 one. As for the rest, they were all driving exactly what you’d expect them to be in, although of course, most had been substantially re-fettled, re-built or re-vamped during the winter break.

Although they’d got further than the aforementioned Mr Gordon, things didn’t start too well for the heat one runners. As Newall leapt away at the green flag the rest got bunched up behind Neil Muddle, resulting in Sanders going spinning to spark off a multi-car crash that stopped the race almost before it had started. Billy Bonnar, Muddle, Hughie Weaver, Dick Hillard and Colin Gomm all got involved in a resounding sequence of biffs and bangs that took a while to sort out.

Bonnar required some help to get out of his car and retired to the domain of the medicos. I saw him a little while later casually, although left handedly, inspecting the wares on one of the concession stands. When asked if he was alright, Billy revealed that he had his other wrist planted firmly on an ice pack inside his overalls, but declared, “It’s just a sprain, I’ll be fine”. I was still surprised to see him out for heat two, though not awfully surprised when he didn’t do very well and declined to take part in the final. It was only after his return to Scotland that the true picture emerged; Billy had broken some bones in his hand and requires an operation in order to pin them back together. They breed ‘em tough in Fife!

Back to the plot. Following the re-start, Newall led for most of the way, but was challenged by Russell Wilcox nearing the finish, with Russ also coming under pressure himself from Sanders and Hillard. This meant that Wilcox was not in a position to be overly polite about his challenge anymore and, as the leader had already been asked by the steward a couple of times to hold his line, it was not really a surprise that no penalties were imposed when a clash between the two sent the Scot spinning. That left Russ to collect the win having successfully fended off the other pair for the remaining couple of laps.

Remember what I said in the last Brum report from last year about Mark Edwards: “…even in this company, Edwards still managed an eleventh in the final which if he re-appears in 2009, will surely make him one to watch” ?   OK, so the official grader, trying to err on the side of not totally demoralising ‘newbies’, was probably far too nice to him in terms of grid position. But I also said last year that new drivers often flatter to deceive in the wet if they have a car that is too heavy or underpowered, or both, so we couldn’t be sure that Mark was really that fast. Apparently though, he is, and the other two heats belonged entirely to the rapid newcomer. The former Lightning Rod man beat Ralph Sanders home in the second heat, which featured the unusual sight of Colin White spinning during the warm ups!

Edwards was chased initially by Callender and later by Sanders, but nobody ever really got near him. The main point of note here was Hillard’s sterling drive to get up to finish third, Dick spending many laps on the outside of Hardie in order to do so. The other centre of interest was the massive battle between the ‘aces’ starting at the back, which basically availed most of them of absolutely nothing, while Lee Pepper had an impressive run to net fifth.

Callender had a spell out front in heat three but quickly lost out to Edwards, who darted down the inside and then naffed off into the distance. Maybe he let up a bit nearing the finish, or maybe the others were going quicker by then, or perhaps a little of both. Whatever: as the laps ran out, both Wilcox and Willie Hardie were closing in fast and Mark wasn’t very far ahead at all by flag fall. Once again, Pepper looked pretty sharp on his way to fourth.

On a night when the acknowledged stars were consistently locked out of the major places, the final was to be no different, with Newell, Edwards and Wilcox all looking good bets for the win.

Newell led from the green flag with Edwards and Wilcox immediately in pursuit. With matters soon relatively stagnant up front, the focal point of this turned out to be the massive scrap going on much further back as the usual front runners battled with each other to gain an edge. In the midst of this, Carl Boardley took a bang that broke his axle, putting the world champion out.

Eventually it became apparent that Edwards was not going to be able to catch the flying Newall, who was making a fine fist of leading this time and obviously had his head well down and concentration control turned right up. Thus Edwards and Wilcox ended up dicing for second with ‘best of the rest’ Dick Hillard, who’d caught up fast as the laps dwindled. This was resolved when Wilcox’s steering broke, sending him wide and into Edwards’ side as they rounded turn four. While Mark was probably busy wondering why Russ had hit him, and Russell trying to work out what was going on (he found out when the car went straight on to the wall at the next bend!), both of them ran wide as a result of the impact. Hillard wasted no time capitalising on the situation and zipped past to claim second, but too late for him to close down the leader in the remaining four laps. Graham Brown
Heat one:  219,734,31,444,85,174,41,305,911,601,210,95,303,3,68,2
Heat two:  45,734,31,72,155,85,67,61,95,3,871,718,115,285,27,427,519
Heat three:  45,219,72,155,601,278,27,871,911,305,41,115,61,519,718,427,210,285,844
Final: 601,31,45,67,155,85,174,303,911,3,95,115,72,305,718,285, 210,27,278 (285=Darron Lewis)

2009 World Series England round 08
Boardley back to his best
Birmingham Wheels, Saturday 8th November 2008

Graham Brown reports:  A night of mixed track conditions and heavy rain gave the more experienced aces a chance to shine, Carl Boardley taking a heat and final double after enduring a difficult few months. The final turned into something of a classic, with former world champions battling throughout for the podium places.

The big entry led to a four heat format being adopted for the first time in a long time. This was mostly due to a large influx of Scots either looking for some action now that their season has finished or, in some cases, dipping a toe in the water with the intent of racing NHR’s full time next year.

Equalling James Jamieson in the well travelled stakes was Graeme Gordon, who says that when he bought his Tigra, it was always with an eye on having a go down South some day, and this was that day. Similarly, Graeme Callender – who has raced on the National stage before many moons ago – purchased his ex-Gomm Colt (it was Colin’s Silhouette) with much the same in mind. The last time I saw Pete McVay race, it was in a Saloon Stock Car which, as we both agreed, made it rather a long time ago! Apparently, the other Scots had been nagging him to come and have a go too, putting the unusual sight of a modern Mini back in the ranks.

With these three added to the Scots already registered and racing in England, that made no less than nine of them for the meeting, and it would have been ten if Billy Bonnar hadn’t unfortunately been forced to cancel.

There was a lone Sassenach debutant amongst Ecurie Ecosse, that being sometime Lightning rodder and more recently, Outlaw racer, Mark Edwards with his pretty blue Peugeot 206.

So, with all the ingredients in place, big field of cars, four heats scheduled, everything looked set fair for a great night’s racing…if the weather would just play ball.

Heat one at least, took place in the dry. By this time, Willie Hardie had already been in the wall in practice, and turned out for this with the car bearing lots of tape to hold it altogether. Tim Pullen was the first to show here before losing out to Russ Wilcox after a few laps. A few tours more though, and the yellows were flying when Peter Blood caned the barriers exiting turn two and got stranded there. Dave Brooks got removed from his third place in the line up for the restart, having been adjudged to be the cause of Blood’s demise.

That left Pullen and John Sibbald to dispute second when the green re-appeared, although Tim was very slow away, tempting John into trying an immediate pass which saw the pair collide and spin. That put Colin Gomm up to second instead, soon to become embroiled in a scrap with Malcolm Blackman, Steve Thompson and Matt Simpson. With the leader a quarter of a lap clear, the places dice broke up after Gomm and Blackman appeared to get locked together along the back straight, leading to a further collision between Gomm and Simpson entering turn three.

Thompson made the best capital out of all this to snatch up second but, although he was closing in on Wilcox by the finish, it was never going to be fast enough to alter the outcome.

The rain was already spitting at the start of heat two, which featured a lead scrap between Iain Grayson and Waine Souter until Colin White caught up. White went by Souter to set about the leader as the rain began to intensify, signified by Tam Rutherford having a half spin and getting clouted by Jason Kew, Rutherford then having an ‘off’ at the start/finish in the company of Dick Hillard, Lee Pepper spinning on the pit bend and smacking the wall – and so on.

With everyone on slicks, these were conditions for the experienced hands to make their presence felt, White moving past Grayson and off into a big lead. Once Colin had decided he couldn’t be caught, he treated us to an excellent display of sideways driving as the rain began in earnest, even if he did manage to let the back marking McVay cheekily nip past him again as a consequence!

Anyone not totally enthralled by watching White’s skid pan technique, might have noticed Edwards making a highly creditable advance to finish sixth, having started stone last – not half bad for a newbie. OK, so he knows the Wheels track, and new recruits can sometimes flatter to deceive if it’s wet, particularly if their car is heavy, or underpowered, or both. But even if all that were true, it was still an impressive drive. And, there was more to come.

The rain had got seriously heavy for heat three, with Neil Muddle spinning the moment the green flag was shown. Andy Holtby didn’t take long to spin either. But it was White who was out front again after just over a lap. That looked as though it could be the end of the matter right there, as far as the destiny of the win went. Boardley, however, had other ideas. He was clearly going even faster as he cut through the pack to catch up to the leader.

Colin did his best to stay ahead, and even re-passed after Carl’s initial thrust down the inside of the far bend. But it was the current gold roof holder who had the final say about this duel, and cleared off into the distance. Matt Simpson – always very much at home in the wet – also caught and passed White to grab second, with Jamieson past the 718 car too by the end. By that point, Boardley had lapped everybody up eighth spot, but I truly hesitate to use the old Jim Gregory joke about being ‘home and dry’!

And what of Edwards this time, I hear you asking. Seventh, and yes, he did start last again.

There are few weather conditions so bad that they cannot get worse, with absolute monsoon conditions greeting the fourth heat runners.  Pullen, Wilcox briefly, and then Mikey Godfrey all had turns out front before Blackman came splashing through the field to overhaul the Saxo going down the back straight. Another wet weather exponent, Colin Gomm, was never very far behind either, and was definitely closing on Blackman at one stage. But, with the laps counting down, Malcolm was clearly back in the groove, the 911 car throwing up huge rooster tails of spray all round the track as he headed for the win.

With the rain stopped but the track still very wet, Grayson took an immediate lead in the final only to go spinning along the back straight, giving Souter the top slot. Iain got T-boned by Godfrey and, with Wilcox getting involved too, yellows seemed to be in order. Following the caution, Souter also went round, handing the baton to a recovered Wilcox, while Boardley had a get-out-of-jail-free moment when he nearly spun but got collected by Gavin Murray, straightening him up.

Wilcox had quite a few laps to enjoy his lead, but it was all change once White caught up and blasted through to the front. He was though, being hotly pursed by Gomm, Blackman and Boardley. An absorbing battle ensued, with Boardley ripping down the outside line to pass Blackman and Gomm, setting up an ‘old school versus new’ fight with White.

With Blackman still right there, the three men, with seven world titles between them, indulged in a full-on hot rod race. Boardley’s eventual flawless outside pass of White wasn’t the end of the entertainment either. The White/Blackman dice for second lasted most of the remaining laps until Blackman managed to box White behind a back marker to claim the position. Gomm was never out of touch either, his drive to fourth probably good enough to win any race not already being argued over by multiple world champions. A fitting climax to the 2008 finale which even the dodgy weather didn’t manage to spoil.

And, even in this company, Edwards still managed an eleventh in the final which if he re-appears in 2009, will surely make him one to watch.  Graham Brown
Heat one: 219,170,911,61,303,278,72,95,41,338,427,308,601,35.
Heat two: 718,191,491,174,53,45,519,27,115,31,305,85,8,188,871,187,348.
Heat three: 41,303,305,718,85,427,45,61,601,308,155,519,188,53.
Heat four: 911,278,491,95,170,115,27,174,187,871,338,348.
Final: 41,911,718,278,170,305,95,303,115,85,45,174,427,61,601,219,308,53,519,871,27,188 
(338 = Graeme Gordon, 188 = Pete McVay, 871 = Graeme Callender, 45 = Mark Edwards)

2009 World Series England round 07
Scotland the brave
Ipswich, Saturday 18th October 2008

Graham Brown reports:  On a night when you really needed a ‘brave heart’ to be on track, as it will be remembered mainly for several large crashes, it was the Scots visitors who came out of it all best. Willie Hardie took a hat trick of overdue wins which included the final, while Ronnie McKenzie won the remaining heat and took second in another.

There was a fair old entry for this, swollen by a number of racers who, in some cases, have not been seen in world qualifying action for quite some time. With the season in Scotland finished, if their drivers want any action now they will have to look south, McKenzie and Tam Rutherford both making the long trip to join NHR regulars Hardie and Billy Bonnar. The surprise booking from north o’ the border though, had to be James Jamieson Jnr, the Aberdonian making a welcome return to Foxhall. What’s more, it would seem these are not the only Scots with ambitions towards racing Nationals…

Equally as surprising – or maybe not, depending on how you look at it - was the re-appearance of JJJ’s frequent ‘running mate’ of recent years, Colin White, the three time world champion having obviously whetted his appetite in Ireland sufficiently to do some more. Add to the mix a number of drivers who haven’t been around that much lately – Colin Smith, Mike Thurley, Trevor Stroud and Alan White. Then stir in a complete newcomer, 2.0 Hot Rod ‘find’ of 2008, William Reed, having a taste of the real thing in the Haird 206cc as raced recently by Keith Martin, and you have a recipe for a pretty crowded pits. To say nothing of track, actually.

McKenzie made a great start to the opening heat and, despite pressure from Sammy Shudall, was still leading when a clash between Richard Smith and Ralph Sanders sparked off a monumental race stopping crash. Sanders, being challenged for position by the fast moving Colin White, tried to force a way past Smith on the inside going through turns 3-4. When Smith slammed the door in his face, he turned both of them onto the speedway track, which was damp and very slippery. From that point on, the pair were just passengers in their own cars, and once Ralph’s car came back broadside across the track by the pit gate, nothing good was going to happen.

White (“I thought I’d got away with it by driving out wide to the wall…”) clipped Sanders, spinning himself as the impact all but tore his back axle out. No amount of Raceceiver warnings were ever going to prevent a disaster now, as car after car slammed into the stricken racers. I couldn’t write fast enough to get them all, so please forgive me if there’s anyone I’ve failed to mention as being caught up in the shunt. For sure, Colin Smith (heavy frontal), Carl Boardley (heavy right front), Bonnar (all sorts), Jamieson (heavy right front) and Phil Spinks (chassis badly bent) - who also caught fire briefly – were all right in it. Not to mention Sanders’ car, which looked a complete wreck – or indeed, Richard Smith’s. To add to the catalogue of misery, Richard got loaded up for causing the incident, and Stu Carter had to pull out of the restart when his left front brake seized on.

McKenzie and Shudall fought over the lead again after the restart until Shudall, who appeared to be in trouble of some sort, fell back leaving the Scot to a clear win. Shudall still just managed to fend off a last gasp thrust up the outside from Chris Haird, who’d been really motoring in the closing stages. Unlike Malcolm Blackman, who spectacularly blew his engine coming down the home straight with two to go, the motor expiring with a load “crump” and gushing smoke and steam out of every available hole.

McKenzie looked all set to repeat the exercise in heat two and went straight into the lead at the off. Alan White and Reed somehow managed to get together as they took the green flag, the incident eliminating both men.

McKenzie was still leading when, sadly, another multi-car shunt brought out the caution flags. Somehow, Colin Smith got into the 3-4 turn way too deep (and to be fair, Colin said someone else put him out wide to begin with), then cut back down to the inside, colliding with Phil Young. That sent the pair of them into the barriers, taking Thurley and Boardley with them. The world champion’s car really didn’t need another spanking on the front end and now looked very sorry for itself, although it was fit to take the restart, albeit from last in the line up. The same couldn’t be said of Thurley’s car which was definitely not well after the crash.

The hiatus naturally put all the placemen right up with the leader, McKenzie’s fellow countryman Hardie taking advantage of the situation to overtake on the exit from turn two and collect his first win. Elsewhere, Luke Armiger went spinning and Andy Steward got black crossed for causing it, and Jamieson carried on his great evening by getting black flagged when his bonnet and other parts flew off. Shudall, who’d retired on the far bend, had his car briefly catch fire, apparently without any real damage. As a final footnote to this one, Colin Smith got disqualified from eighth for being the cause of the earlier ruckus, with Steve Thompson similarly getting the order of the boot for causing Gavin Murray to rotate two laps from home.

Heat three – which saw Malcolm Blackman back out after some sterling work to change his engine – saw Hardie swiftly pass early leader Tim Pullen to open out a big lead. He lost a lot of it in awkward traffic nearing the finish, but second man David Brooks never got close enough to alter the outcome.

The main interest here was the places dice from fourth backwards, which at one time involved no less than seven cars. The winner of this dispute, Jay Austin, eventually ended up claiming third after Pullen went out near the finish with a flat in the left front. As the tyre was completely off the rim by the time he limped around to the pit gate, it may have been that he’d touched the wall somewhere along the way. Blackman’s enthusiasm to get through and make all his work count for something led to him being involved in a couple of skirmishes along the way, which in turn led to his being dropped two places.

Pullen clearly set out to make amends for failing to get a place in that last heat. He held the final lead for a bit longer before Hardie once again forged ahead, only for Tim to spin coming off the pit bend, unwittingly kicking off another race-stopping pile up. Armiger, Colin Gomm, Austin and McKenzie were all involved in running into either Pullen or each other, with both Luke and Ronnie unfortunately requiring medical attention as a result. Neither was badly hurt, but the fact they were hurt at all – however slightly – just about put the tin lid on this particular evening.

The damage toll wasn’t complete yet however, as Stroud went spinning backwards into the pit bend Armco soon after the restart. Although Brooks was able to challenge the leader after the resumption, Hardie was again able to pull well clear. I’m not sure if the irony of this situation would have occurred to Willie, as it has so often been him spinning and getting into bother lately and, on an evening when the opportunities to get into trouble were certainly legion, he never put a foot wrong.

Despite Willie taking complete control up front, there was still plenty to watch further back. There was a superb drive into second from Colin White, the three time world champion having spent most of the night rebuilding his car after the first heat smash. Boardley too, was still well up for it, his battered Tigra seemingly working well in spite of the towsing it had had. It took him a long time to work his way past Dick Hillard, quite a while to deal with Carter and he was definitely having trouble with Rutherford approaching the finish, until Tam clashed with Carter, putting both men off. That got Boardley through, but it had undoubtedly been a hard drive that only netted a seventh place.

So: hardly a night to look back on with any great relish – unless you happened to be Willie Hardie of course. Or maybe Matt Simpson who, despite not having a startlingly good night himself, had done enough to take over the points lead.

OK, two of the major incidents were directly attributable to poor driving or bad errors of judgement, take your pick. Certainly the stewards thought so and took action against those deemed to be responsible. The third major crash was just Tim Pullen being a bit eager with the throttle and, face it, these things happen. Indeed, it might have happened if he’d started at the back, as the exit from a bend isn’t a great place to spin at any time.

The plus point, if there was one, was the remarkably cheerful attitude that seemed to be adopted by almost every driver and team who’d copped a lot of damage. They all seemed to just set to and tried to fix it with hardly a word of complaint, in a couple of cases without even any certainty that they were going to make the final. I have known drivers who’ve barely scratched the paintwork moan more and, in that respect, Saturday night did make a refreshing change.

Now, can we just get back to some more normal racing please? Graham Brown
Heat one: 187,444,115,61,303,155,8,3,31,844,27,421,174,500. NOF
Heat two: 72,187,85,303,115,(170),427,(491),174,95,402,519. NOF
Heat three: 72,67,427,155,95,278,61,170,519,844,911(-2),8,402,3,27,31,308,500.
Final: 72,718,67,115,444,27,41,95,155,61,31,303,170,305,3,911,85 (etc.)

2009 World Series England round 06
Bonnar parts the waters
Northampton, Sunday 5th October 2008

Graham Brown reports:  In a meeting that nearly didn’t take place at all due to track flooding, Billy Bonnar found the wet conditions much to his liking, the Scot making off with a two heat and final hat trick.

At half past ten in the morning, and with the rain still persisting down, Northampton’s track was deeply flooded at both ends – but especially through turns one and two. With only one small pump on hand the situation did not look good and abandonment of the meeting seemed like the only sensible option.

But with transporters already lined up waiting at the pit gate, drivers, officials and track staff weighed up the situation and eventually decided to give it a go. With the 3-4 turns almost drivable anyway (the water was only about one third the way across the track there), it was decided to concentrate efforts on the other end. A tractor with a sweeper attachment was employed to move most of the water from 3-4 down to 1-2.

I’m tempted to say it was all hands to the pumps, but with only one pump, this was not feasible or necessary. But a tractor with a digger bucket began lifting the water out and chucking it onto the terraces, while Dick Hillard rounded up all the waste bins he could find and organised a bailing out operation. Jeff Simpson even rang the local fire brigade to see if they would come out and pump the track for free!

Eventually, every bucket in the stadium, or receptacle of any sort that was larger than a paper cup was pressed into service, and the huge quantity of water was (mostly) shifted from both bends to enable the meeting to run, albeit nearly two hours after the scheduled start time. Even the weather finally decided to co-operate, with the rain eventually dying out too.

It must be said that this was a magnificent effort from all concerned, drivers, team members, marshals, officials and track maintenance staff, and everybody’s can-do attitude and willingness to get their feet (and just about everything else) wet was the only reason this meeting got run. Northampton (Brafield) always used to say on their advertising ‘We Never Cancel’. I checked with Bev Greenhalf, who’s been associated with the track since…well, a very long time indeed, and he confirmed that, had the meeting not run, it really would have been the first time in its history they had ever cancelled. So it was good we kept that tradition alive – not that any of the willing workers probably had any idea that’s what they were doing.

So: was it all worth it? Oh yes.

Billy Bonnar had arrived with his ex-Boardley 206, the one he crashed hard at Cowdy some while back, intending mainly to just give it a run out and see if it had come through the major repairs OK. It looked as though it had. Following five exploratory laps to give everyone a good look at where the remaining standing water actually was, the green flag came out and Billy went straight into the lead of the opening heat.

As the leader and everyone else dodged around the various spun cars and remaining lagoons, it was Phil Spinks who got up to challenge Bonnar, with Colin Gomm and Jeff Simpson not far back. Gomm went spinning out of the paces after contact with Simpson, the lead dice being joined by Malcolm Blackman and Dick Hillard in the closing stages, but Bonnar held on to take win number one.

With much of its workload having been removed, the drain at turns 1-2 had managed to finish off what remained, and by heat two there was hardly even a puddle left down by the kerbing.

Bonnar quickly saw off any early opposition to open out a huge lead, leaving the rest to work out who was going to be second. Waine Souter and Andy Steward both took turns in the runner up slot, before first Phil Spinks and then Matt Simpson came through to assume second. Matt set about trying to chase down the leader, and he’d cut Bonnar’s half lap advantage back considerably by flag fall, but the winner was never really in any doubt.

Following a false start, Simpson Jnr went one better in the third encounter, slicing through the traffic to eventually overhaul long time leader Souter well before the finish. Finely controlled drives by both Hillard and Jay Austin got them home second and third respectively, with Simpson Snr next over the line and Souter – beginning to look more at home in the formula now – a pretty good fifth.

The oval was virtually dry for the final, sparking the usual pits discussions (which hadn’t seemed at all likely a few hours earlier) about “Shall we go with wets, slicks or two-and-two?”. The race kicked off with Bonnar and Souter battling hard for the lead throughout the first lap. After Souter had a near spin, (and Willie did the real thing) Bonnar was off and running again, this time pursued by Sammy Shudall and Mikey Godfrey.

With Hardie soon in trouble again – this time ending up in the turn three barriers with Stu Carter - Godfrey fell back, and it was John Holtby and Austin who began moving to the fore.

The arrival of mid-distance saw Bonnar half a lap to the good and Austin and Matt Simpson had relegated Shudall. It still looked to be Bonnar’s all the way, until a couple of spinners (one of them Shudall) brought out the yellows.

Naturally, this diminished Bonnar’s gap over the rest, but with several backmarking cars still barring their way to the front, by the time Austin, Simpson and Andy Holtby had broken through, there were less than five laps to run.

Austin got very close on the last lap nevertheless, and when Bonnar left a huge inviting hole up his inside it looked as though he’d given it away. But Jay still couldn’t quite prevent the Scot completing his hat trick.

Maybe not quite such stirring stuff as the Birmingham final, or even the Aldershot one come to that, but well worth seeing, and an excellent result for Bonnar who so often does the miles with little to show for it. On this day, Billy could have come all that way for nothing. Yes, clearing the water was worth the effort, absolutely. Graham Brown
Heat one: 844,3,911,14,31,170,115,61,278,155,734,219,210,2,217,27,519,72.
Heat two: 844,303,14,198,278,911,61,53,85,6,95,38,115,174,444,2,27,427
Heat three: 303,31,427,3,53,170,95,85,6,444,72,210.
Final: 844,427,303,61,170,3,14,6,38,174,210,95,278,155,31,444,27
Please note that these results are still provisional and subject to official confirmation.

2009 World Series England round 05
Simpson superb in second city
Birmingham Wheels, Saturday September 27th 2008

Graham Brown reports:  Jeff Simpson took a classic victory from a superb final at The Wheels, fighting his way round the outside of long time leader John Holtby to get the best of a five car lead battle.

With a fairly hefty entry of 33 cars for this one, for the first time since ceilings were introduced on the number of cars that can race in a final at each track, the guys were actually forced to qualify for the feature event. As Brum has the lowest permissible final numbers of any track on the Nationals’ regular beat (26) that meant seven cars were going to have to be eliminated.

Although we have in fact breached the entry-versus-final-grid figure before, it has only been by a couple of cars, and straightforward attrition can usually be relied upon to account for those. That was what had happened previously, but Saturday night was a different story, with no cars falling by the wayside and the good old Longhurst Points Chart being called upon to separate the qualifiers from the non-qualifiers.

Adding to those 33 were two complete newcomers to the class. Former Spedeworth 2.0 Hot rodder (and 1300 stock car driver) and son of one-time Nationals racer Kevin, Sammy Shudall was making his debut in an ex-Hillard Peugeot 206, while some-time BriSCA F2 man Tim Pullen was also there for his long awaited first outing. Sorry anoraks, I can’t remember for the life of me now, whose car Tim has, although it’s another red 206. Although no longer a new car or driver, I must also mention that Jason Kew has now got the ex-Goodsir machine painted in some colours of his own choosing (and not blue and orange either!), and very smart it looked too.

In a night of what was to be generally class racing, it was Malcolm Blackman who drew first blood from an opening race which featured rather too much contact for the steward’s liking. Blackman may have had a more advantageous grid position than usual, but still had to work for his win by passing nine cars, many of them via the outside trip.

But before Malcolm could get busy with that, Dave Brooks took a  spin going into bend one lap one. Ken Marriott took up the lead with John Holtby and Phil Young following, while Phil Spinks had a spin on the exit from turn four. Dick Hillard hit the wall in the resulting melee and then retired, and what with all the black crosses being waved about, it was difficult to know where to look next! Speaking of crosses, there were two each for Andy Holtby and Carl Boardley, and the impressively fast moving Sammy Shudall set an (un)enviable record by becoming the first ever provisional licence holder to get black crossed (at all), never mind in his first race, at his first meeting. Respect!

If it had been difficult to know where to look next in the opener, the frenetic second heat was, if anything, worse! It arrived at a similar outcome to the first, with Blackman having to pass the same number of cars by just about the same methods. It also featured a turn one, lap one spinner, this time in the shape of Billy Bonnar.

Incidentally, if I mentioned everybody who spun in this (the track was clearly pretty slippy all night) it would take up a lot of space. But Willie Hardie’s second rotation deserves a special mention coming, as it did, right in front of the leaders when Holtby and Blackman had quite enough to worry about already!

Holtby actually provided Blackman with a good scrap for the lead before Malcolm finally got by two laps from home, while Jeff Simpson gave chase all the way only to lose a couple of places to the steward (for causing one of Hardie’s spins), the fourth driver of the night to be so penalised.

Heat three was another race featuring spins aplenty, the most relevant of which were early leaders Peter Blood’s and Waine Souter’s, all of which handed the initiative to Ken Marriott. Marriott went on to record a fine win by a comfortable margin with Jason Kew managing to keep second despite the close attentions of Simpson and Chris Haird. Steve Thompson was going like a train towards the end and crossed the line fifth, only for him to also fall foul of a two place penalty.

The final was probably the race of the year. Yes, yes, I know there have been a few contenders, but I rate this more highly than the Mallory final (because this was on a ‘proper’ short oval) and better than the Aldershot final because this had five cars involved and not three, OK?

Just to demonstrate how tricky the track surface was (for no good reason that I could see), Matt Simpson spun during the warm up laps.

Young took the early lead, pursued by John Holtby, Hardie and soon, Blackman. Given his earlier performance, Blackman was already looking the likely winner, but Slim definitely had him in his sights this time and was following in his wheel tracks wherever Malcolm went.

It wasn’t long before they were up to third and fourth (Young was being challenged for the lead by Holtby now), and this time Simpson was able to pressure Blackman, finding a way past down the inside on the pit bend. Holtby, Simpson and Blackman had all just managed to relegate Young when suddenly, the yellows were flying for the spun and stranded Hughie Weaver car on the turn two exit.

With the green back out, the lead battle commenced in earnest, with Holtby and Simpson side by side for lap after lap, and Blackman right behind and trying hard to force an error from either of the two ahead. Once Simpson had committed to Holtby’s outside, there was no way back in anyway, with Blackman now glued to the leader’s bumper. Three times at least, Simpson got ahead, but never far enough to cut in on Holtby.

When Stuart Carter and Andy Holtby got up to join in as well, the race could have gone to any of them. Simpson redoubled his efforts and all but spun it away at the pit bend, just as he’d done at Aldershot trying the same thing. But this time he held onto the slide and still somehow managed to stay in front of Blackman.

The starter began counting down the laps, with Jeff no nearer to getting ahead than he’d ever been. Five to go. Four to go. The #3 edged ahead once more but still not enough to make the pass stick until, half a lap later, he went in front as they got onto the back straight.

The battle for second/third/fourth/fifth raged on, with Blackman inspired to try his own outside pass of Holtby, which simply served to let Carter by, and then Andy Holtby, although Malcolm had clawed his way back to fourth by flag fall. Absolutely great drives from all involved, Simpson obviously, but also John Holtby for keeping the fantastically tight line that made such a race possible, Carter and Andy Holtby for not giving in to the temptation to try any rough stuff in the closing laps, and Blackman for never, ever giving up. Definitely one of those races that reminds you why you go. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 911,2,6,421,95,427,61(-2),210,41(-2),72,155,519,303,601,219,444(-2),67,38
Heat two: 911,6,85,421,3(-2),115,170,95,303,519,444,734,278,601,210,72,500,53,844
Heat three: 2,174,3,115,27,278,170(-2),41,61,31,85,155,217,67,92,219,38
Final: 3,6,85,911,61,95,31,421,170,115,519,278,303,155,41,601,174,444,67

2009 World Series England round 03 & 2009 World Series England round 04
Hednesford, Monday August 25th 2008 & Ipswich, Saturday September 6th 2008
Special double report by Graham Brown:

Hillard’s Hills holiday: Dick Hillard took a heat and final double at Hednesford on bank holiday Monday, even managing a third in his other race after a crash. Jay Austin was the other driver having a good day as he made off with the other two heats.

The first race provided an opportunity for Austin to get his season underway and open his points scoring account in earnest. Engine woes have bedevilled the Ipswich racer of late but the new one was clearly firing on all cylinders as he took the lead just one lap in. Austin stayed in front the rest of the way, doing well to fend off a serious last lap challenge from Ricky Hunn.

Although completely irrelevant as far as major place changes were concerned, must just mention the great pass Carl Boardley managed to put on Andy Holtby during their dice over tenth spot.

Iain Grayson was the first to show in heat two, but Austin was on him and by after a couple of tours. They were all brought up short though, when the yellows flew for the Holtby brothers, John having blown a motor causing Andy to crash into him on the oil! Steve Thompson nearly went with them, and Hillard emerged from it all with a big bite missing out of his left front wheel arch.

There was more crashing later when a West bend incident (Mikey Godfrey spun to spark it all off) sent Boardley into the wall in the aftermath. Having been exonerated by the video of playing a part in the Godfrey spin, Willy Hardie then had a very smoky spin himself. The blame for this was also initially laid at someone else’s door (Stu Carter), but again, the video showed this not to be the case. Carter still got a two place penalty however, but for jumping the start.

Austin had the lead throughout all this, but had a tough time keeping the hard trying Lee Pepper at bay, the pair crossing the line side by side with Austin only just in front.

With Austin not out for the third heat it was Russ Wilcox who made the break, hotly pursued by newcomer, Phil Young. Young dropped back a bit as fast movers Hillard and Gavin Murray went by, sparking a short lived but hectic lead dice with Wilcox. Hillard got the best of this shortly before Wilcox retired, surviving both a late caution (Ken Marriott having come to rest in a dicey spot on the East bend) and any further pressure from Murray to collect the win.

The final saw some tight racing for all the top places. Young set the pace early on before losing out to Austin. As Young dropped back a little, Austin then had to square up to Hillard. Following a caution period for Matt Simpson – who was embedded in an infield embankment – the Austin-Hillard dice continued apace, with Hillard trying hard to get by down the outside.

Behind these two, there was more side by side racing, where Billy Bonnar, Murray, Pepper and a repaired Boardley were also hard at it. I hate to keep harping on about Boardley here, particularly as he didn’t actually win anything, but he and his crew really do deserve a mention for the sterling work they did to get the # 41 moving again. With the rear axle and left front suspension having to be changed after the earlier impact, they then discovered the propshaft was u/s too. As no-one had a compatible prop, they pressed another type into service by dint of simply changing the gearbox as well!

But this race really was all about Austin and Hillard, who put on an absolutely perfect display of real one-on-one ‘rod racing’, as hard as you like with no quarter asked or given, while at the same time, totally fair. Hillard’s persistence eventually wore Austin down, Dick going on to take what was, in the end, a convincing victory.

By finishing time, Jay was having to cope with an assault on his position from Murray and Boardley, with Boardley out-fumbling Murray on the last lap to gain some consolation for his less-than-great afternoon with a well taken third.

Hardie got dropped no less than four places for a jumping the restart, while Hunn copped a disqualification for sending Bonnar spinning.

*

Kew gardens two wins at Foxhall: Nationals newcomer Jason Kew fell just one place short of recording a hat trick of wins at Ipswich, the Spedeworth 2.0 Hot Rod convert being only narrowly beaten by Phil Spinks in heat two.

Unusually, and with only 28 cars on hand, three ‘straight’ races were run to an ‘all in’ format.

Kew, starting at the front of the grid, soon put both his 2.0 litre experience and his ex-Tony Goodsir car to good use, blasting off into an immediate lead in heat one. Undoubtedly, the fairly crowded track contributed to a confusing first few laps, with cars falling out left, right and centre due to spins, punctures and other maladies. John Holtby was one such, who discovered that his rebuilt bottom end should probably have been matched with a rebuilt head to go with it, the car getting parked for the rest of the evening with what was thought to be a bent valve. Billy Bonnar collected a black cross, as did Luke Armiger, in Luke’s case, for smacking into Waine Souter. Armiger was later forced out as a legacy of the incident, with smoke pouring from the left front wheel.

All of which, assisted Kew and second man Richard Smith into a big lead in the early going. They looked all set for the top two places until the yellows flew nine laps from home, when Alan White crashed the wall exiting turn two.

With the field closed up for the restart, Spinks was handily placed to mount a challenge and swiftly dispensed with Smith to have a go at the leader. Kew was under real pressure in the dying seconds but still managed to hang on well for his maiden victory.

Nearing the end, Austin slapped the back straight wall and then tried to press on, only to discover at the pit bend that the bang had broken something important, sending him straight on and hard into the barrier.

Heat two suffered a complete restart after an early back straight kerfuffle left Malcolm Blackman’s car in mid-track minus a rear wheel. Once hostilities recommenced, Kew and Smith were soon at it again but, as in the first race, a caution period (thrown when Dick Hillard spun to a halt in a dodgy spot) brought Spinks a lot closer to them.

Spinks soon carved past the other placemen to relegate Smith and set about dealing with the leader. Kew still looked to have matters under control until the last lap, when he closed in far too fast on a huge traffic jam’s worth of back markers. I was already thinking, “Ooh, you don’t want to do that!”, when Spinks seized the chance, went straight for the outside pass and took the win off the last bend in absolutely classic style and by a mere twelve hundredths of a second.

That race might have taught Jason not to catch up with back marking traffic on the last lap when you don’t absolutely have to, even if - perhaps especially if - you’re under pressure from behind. Easy enough for me to say of course, when I’m not sat in the car! But something he probably already knows from 2.0’s, is that if you must deal with traffic during the race when you’re way out in front, deal with it boldly and fast before anyone can chase you down.

So, in the final he was off like a shot, rapidly leaving Smith – running second once again – a quarter of a lap behind. Spinks wasn’t going to be a problem for the leader this time, as he was forced to non-start with engine bothers. And, except for the large number of back markers he did end up having to deal with, nobody got near Kew for the duration.

The real interest here centred on the dice for second, which warmed right up towards the finish. Smith faced a challenge from Ralph Sanders – who’d been going well all night – the pair touching going into turn three, sending Smith spinning. Ralph was slowed sufficiently by the incident to give Armiger the chance to dive past, although he still had to keep cool over the last couple of laps as Lee Pepper and Sanders still had every chance of taking the spot for themselves.

There were quite a number of crosses being bandied about in this one, with Andy Holtby getting dropped two times two places for persistent contact – notably with David Brooks. Steve Thompson was also on the carpet for punting Billy Bonnar near the finish, and also got a two place docking.
Results: Hednesford 25/8/08
Heat one: 427,639,844,303,155,72,278,41,14,115,61,3,421,174,519
Heat two: 427,155,31,95,911,278,115,85(-2),170,734,519,210,27,53,72(-2),219
Heat three: 31,95,85,170,421,844,27,67,3,303,911,734,174,53,601,639
Final: 31,427,41,95,155,(639),911,170,85,219,278,14,53,72(-4),421,61,3,27,601,519,174
Results: Ipswich 6/9/08
Heat one: 174,14,278,734,155,41,303,61,38,198,85,170,911,115,95,210,(78),31,72,---,844(-2)
Heat two: 14,174,38,734,303,278(-2),41,170,85,53,61,519,115,155,844,27,95,(78),31,67
Final: 174,519,155,734,41,278,427,38,115,27,31,85,95,303,61(-4),(78),844,170(-2),72,67

Sorry this is all so late people, but unfortunately, other more pressing matters have intervened of late, i.e. moving house. Incidentally, Deane Wood’s pithy comment on the matter “Moving: what a *%$*!” just about sums it up. At least, I assume he was talking about the act of moving house, rather than me personally for doing it.

Although I’ve never exactly been Jeffrey Bernard when it comes to either missing deadlines or simply just turning in the copy at all, I can’t actually remember the last time I haven’t had something written more or less when it should be. I suppose that’s not too bad a record in 35 years writing about this sport, but it is still once (twice, whatever) too often. Generally, a 2 am or, in extreme circumstances, an all-night session will overcome all obstacles to finishing copy. But with every minute of the day accounted for just lately, and PC’s which insist on going down, ‘phone lines that don’t work when they should, that sort of thing simply hasn’t been possible.

Hopefully, with us now becoming settled in our new abode, normal service will be resumed ASAP. Say, around Christmas. 2010.

I thank you for your indulgence. GB

2009 World Series England round 02
Hughie’s hat trick heaven
Ipswich, Saturday August 16th 2008
Graham Brown reports:  Hughie Weaver recorded a faultless hat trick at Foxhall Heath during which he was rarely headed and not at all in the final, leaving Ricky Hunn the only other race winner after Andy Steward got disqualified.

A few late cancellations still left a pretty healthy entry, with one interesting and welcome newcomer, outlaw racer Phil Young in his ex-Dave Longhurst world championship winning Colt. In its basic but very smart all red livery, the car looks remarkably like exactly what it is, and wouldn’t need much yellow added to complete the illusion!

The opening race was led for almost the entire distance by Russ Wilcox, despite his car trailing its now seemingly customary little trail of smoke. Mikey Godfrey mounted a challenge for a while before falling back, leaving Wilcox to face up to Steward and Hunn instead. Meanwhile, David Brooks went spinning after trying to slam the door on Andy Holtby, and Brooks wasn’t the only one either. Wilcox too, went round after a challenge from Steward, Andy going on to take the flag only to subsequently get disqualified, handing the win to Hunn.

The rest of the meeting was dominated by Weaver. Interrupted only by a caution period in heat two, thrown when John Holtby and Tam Rutherford had a coming together on the pit bend and left Lee Pepper stranded in the aftermath, Hughie made fairly easy work of the rest of the race to collect win number one of the evening.

That yellow flag period led into a very scrappy restart, but once they got going again, there was some pretty good racing going on, albeit some way behind Weaver’s flying Tigra. Billy Bonnar held sway in second for most of the way, but was eventually passed by the dicing trio of Brooks, Hunn and Gavin Murray with two to go, Brooks keeping the insistent Hunn at bay to take second.

Heat three kicked off with a heavy shunt for newcomer Tony Moss. Russ Wilcox got a terrific start from the outside of row two, was able to cut down on Weaver quite legitimately off the line and then tore into a rapidly closing gap inside Moss as they approached turn one. The two appeared to lock wheels - or maybe Russell got up on Tony’s sill. Either way, the pair got locked together and speared off left and straight into the barriers, Moss’ Tigra folding up at the front in a quite alarming fashion. But, as several people pointed out, the car did its job by crumpling up and it’s always better to have a crumpled car than a crumpled driver, Tony thankfully walking away none the worse for the experience. Carl Boardley also remarked, when inspecting the car later, that if you insist on whacking a Tigra right on the end of the chassis rail and at that particular angle into the wall, it won’t do it a lot of good, as he has already proved to himself a couple of times.

The restart saw Weaver (obviously inspired by Wilcox’s example first time around!) make a demon getaway and by the time the rest had sorted themselves out, Hughie was over a quarter of a lap to the good and very safe indeed. Godfrey gave distant but determined chase for a time until the car went very sick, putting him on the infield and causing the team to have to change all sorts in an effort to find the problem before final time. Not long after his departure, we had one of those occasional bizarre incidents when somebody has the steering wheel come off in their hands! Butt of the ‘hadn’t you got any mole grips in your pocket?’ jokes here was Rutherford, his un-nerving discovery sending him crashing into Alan Evans and retiring both cars.

With Godfrey out of it, Steward, Pepper, Dick Hillard and Stuart Carter argued over the places until Hillard got sent spinning into the derelict Evans car by the pit gate, an episode which attracted Carter the black flag. Nearing the finish, Steve Thompson arrived with the other placemen, almost out of nowhere, promptly relegating Pepper and launching a big assault on Doughnut’s second place. Thompson seemed super confident and spent several laps on Steward’s wide outside in an effort to snatch the place away, forcing a virtual dead heat at the line which saw the position still Steward’s by a shade over two hundredths of a second.

It looked like being the same story all over again for Weaver in the final, as he got away fast and was soon coming up behind the main pack. In fact, a mis-cue in traffic looked like being the only possible stumbling block for the leader, particularly as said traffic was seriously bunched up for most of the time.

Dick Hillard and Steward were definitely ‘best of the rest’ here, with Dick looking odds on for second once he’d found a way past Andy. He still had to deal with Godfrey first though, and Mikey wasn’t looking the easy pickings he might have been a couple of months ago, the recovered Saxo handling well and right on the pace.

A proper bit of hot rodding followed, with Godfrey keeping it clean and tight down by the kerb, allowing Hillard the room to have a good go up the outside, which he did, eventually hauling himself in front. Weaver was long gone by now, but second would have been a just reward for Dick’s efforts. And, as Boardley rolled to a stop almost unnoticed with a puncture, it looked to be all over for the major places.

Until, that was, John Holtby and Waine Souter had a bit of a ballet dance on the far turn with five to go. Hillard arrived in the bend to be presented with no choice but to go high to avoid them, which left him scrabbling for grip out on the marbles too. Doughnut’s slightly later arrival gave him the time go low, and straight back past Dick to the runner up slot instead. Hillard was still rightly pleased with both his third place and his new car, which seems to have rejuvenated his entire racing effort. Equally pleased, I suspect, was Godfrey with a fine fourth place, no disgrace whatever in this company.  Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: (198),639,95,41,6,85,61,303,911,115,491,27,844,72,192,421.
Heat two: 210,67,639,95,844,61,41,303,14,519,170,53,278,217,72.
Heat three: 210,198,170,155,734,911,491,278,519,(66),14,31,421.NOF.
Final: 210,198,31,27,95,519,67,734,61,278,85,911,14,155,170.

2009 World Series England round 01
Boardley wins - then loses
Northampton, Sunday July 27th 2008
Graham Brown reports:  Carl Boardley won the final on the road at NIR's very hot and sunny opening round of the 2008/9 world series, only to lose it again when his car failed a post race inside weight check. This handed victory to double heat winner Chris Haird, giving him a hat trick with which to kick off his own qualifying campaign.

A fairly healthy 31 cars for this 'back to work' meeting, the most notable absentee being Malcolm Blackman, who was busy racing in the 2.0 world in NI. As for the other runners and riders, no doubt there were plenty of fans suitably pleased to see the long awaited return to action of Ricky Hunn, the '94 world champion still at the wheel of his familiar Corsa.

Arena racer Tony Moss, having held a NHR licence for several years without ever actually using it, finally made his Nationals debut in a very professionally turned out Tigra.

John vd Bosch was back for another outing this side of the North Sea, Trevor Stroud returned to the world series trail with the beautiful black Tigra we first saw at Ipswich, and Jeff Simpson had taken advantage of Richard Spavins' retirement to acquire his racing number.

Iain Grayson led the pack away into the baking heat of the first race and managed to stay that way, tracked by Waine Souter, until the yellows came out. A pit bend multi-car collision involving Alan Evans, Dave Brooks, Phil Spinks, Boardley and Gavin Murray, sent Murray sideways, backwards and hard into the wall.

The crash put Spinks and Murray (naturally) into retirement, and it looked for a while like Boardley might be joining them, as he pulled onto the infield with some frontal damage. Carl eventually decided to press on and, once Gavin had received some medical attention and his battered car was removed, Grayson took up where he'd left off. Souter briefly disputed second with John Holtby, but the pair had a coming together exiting turn four, leaving Grayson well clear and elevating Haird to second.

While Hunn and Luke Armiger had a similar 'off' to that experienced by Holtby and Souter, only along the back straight, Haird got down to a serious charge. This eventually saw him relieve Grayson of the lead going into turn one. Iain was still looking good for second until his motor unfortunately put a rod through the block just two laps from home, elevating Matt Simpson to a distant second.

Despite trailing quite a bit of smoke, Russ Wilcox was the long time leader of heat two, only losing out to another fast mover from the back of the pack - Steve Thompson - not long before the finish.

Along the way Brooks, Alan White and Hillard all suffered spins, with Jay Austin pouring smoke and looking like another blown engine victim as he abdicated fourth spot on the last lap.

Following heat two, Stroud's car got an inside weight check which it promptly failed, Trevor choosing not to carry on racing with no chance of scoring any points. A driver who fails one of these checks is not loaded up incidentally, just not allowed to score any points.

Heat three saw Mikey Godfrey, Richard Smith and Simon Smith trading the lead between them until Simon made the place his rather more permanently. Namesake Richard never really lost touch, but the pair were interrupted in their private scrap by the in-form Haird. It looked as though Chris had left it too late to prevent Simon S taking the win, but Haird just managed to snatch it after some last lap side by side stuff (with 115 on the outside) that made this just the race of the day.

Wilcox (still puffing smoke despite a rocker cover gasket change) and Simon Smith were the men disputing the final lead until Willie Hardie got up with them. Hillard and yet again, Haird, were also getting in on the act, when Ken Marriott spun to a halt on the exit from turn four. The stranded car was making life difficult around there, although it did enable Hardie to get past Smith by out-fumbling him as they both negotiated the obstruction.

There was no doubt Ken's Corrado couldn't stay where it was, so the yellows came out to allow it's removal.

The restart saw Hardie with the lead but challenged by Hillard. When Willie left a gap down his inside going into three, Dick went for it, the two touched and performed a perfect double pirouette, cueing another yellow.

With the caution period having been thrown for Hardie and Hillard, they were sent to the back for the restart, giving Haird the lead but with Boardley right up on his shoulder in second.

That looked like providing an interesting scrap to the finish, but the world champion wasted little time diving under Haird into turn one.

Carl was clear by flag fall, but it was all to no avail, when his car failed a post race inside weight check, giving the win back to Chris. Thompson - who'd looked quick all day, having really been only overshadowed by Haird - took a well deserved second, ahead of Spinks and Matt Simpson. Graham Brown
Results
Heat one: 115,303,67,(41),72,639,2,3,734,844,277,(66),519,6,53,103.
Heat two: 170,61,219,(41),14,278,27,3,519,2,6,217,192,67,(402),10,31.
Heat three: 115,10,61,170,72,31,38,278,303,734,639,53,844,(66),277,217.
Final: (41),115,170,14,303,67,734,10,217,6,72,31,(66).


Archived reports from previous seasons HERE