..........WE ARE NOT MEETING AT THE CARPENTERS TAVERN - SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS..................
J Stanley Malvern Showground Stages this weekend. 1st single venue event here for many years. Entry filled within a few days and it looks set to be a good day out!
Julian and I are running car 11 and are preparing for a mega battle of the nova's. I see Steve Conner and Brian Thomas are car 30 with Roger Croft and JD at 49.
Anyone else planning to be out?? Looking forward to it!!!
Hi Will!
Should be a really good battle between all you Nova crews, don't think I have seen so many top Novas together on a 'tarmac' event! I'm just going to push the Astra as hard as possible and see if I can get in amongst you all!! There's not much chance of us being one of the quickest FWD on this event as we have on several occasions this year,but I'll have a damn good try!
Apart from having a good time if we can finish higher than our seeding, and possibly in the top 20, this will round off a good year of rallying
Good luck to you both,also to Roger and JD. See you all nice and early Saturday.
Well, what a good event this turned out to be. Despite the stage layouts looking a bit boring with loads of short straights joined by 90's, they turned out to be very challenging due to the many gravel sections linking the bits of tarmac! Add a few hairpins,a few chicanes and several gateways to go through,some buildings ,a split/merge, and a long fast gravel section with a sweeping righthander at the end, and although only 3.6miles average in length they were great fun.Extremely slippery all day,thanks to all the slimey mud being carried on to the tarmac! Tyre choice was to prove critical!
Unfortunately Roger and JD's run was very short,ending on the first stage when a water hose split. Although they got to the end of the stage they were unable to find a suitable replacement so had to retire.
Julian and Will in the Nova were up among the leaders right from the start, although they could not quite match the pace of the quickest 1600 nova lying 2nd overall. They slipped a couple of places over the last two stages as their tyres wore down but still managed 7th overall and 1st in the 1400 class. Only 27secs covered 3rd to 9th places, it was that close at the top.
BT and I started well in the ever-reliable Astra having decided to run X22 handcut Dunlops on the front all day. We had a close encounter with an Escort which joined just behind us at the merge then I nearly overshot the next 90R late braking and he so nearly T-boned us! But we managed to pull away from him after that. The next stage a Scooby came up behind at the merge and after letting him get past when we went a bit wide, we stayed with him to the end . Although he could out-accelerate us (only just!) he was braking much earlier than us for the corners. We could not quite match the speed of Andy Corner or Lyndon Morgan both in 1900 Peugeot 205's but were very happy to find we had finished 12th overall and 3rd in class behind them.
The Astra will now have a wash and an oil change, then it will be ready for next year!
---The-Fat-Albert Stages---28 October 2012...........