Rounds 3 & 4 - Gurston Down, 20th & 21st April
Consistency
According to my dictionary, consistency is either a “degree of viscosity or firmness” or “conformity with previous behaviour or practice”. The people that are generally successful at sprinting and hillclimbing are often the most consistent (using the second definition rather than the first!). The glorious Spring weather resulted in most competitors meeting the “viscous” version of the first definition. |
Gurston Down is a tricky little hill – it is often cited as a “power” hill, but in my experience, it’s all about how you do Karousel corner. The approach speed to the tricky uphill right hander is 90mph, the exit speed is below 30! Some claim a dab of the brakes and a brave turn in will result in the speed being scrubbed by the huge gradient. Others are more circumspect and brake harder on entry, claiming the accuracy will result in improved consistency. The brave sometimes get a better time. The consistent get better – well – consistency.
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Local boys, Mark “Caption Chaos” Everett and Alan Hugh “AHD” Davies are a class act at Gurston. They were placed one and two throughout the whole weekend. Chaos was back out in his newly refurbed “Griffalo” – to re-familiarise himself with the car, he’d attended the practice day at Gurston a few weeks before. I don’t think this gave him too much of an advantage – he would have won anyway, but maybe by not quite so much. Chaos, as his name implies, takes the “brave” approach to Karousel – but amazingly, he
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was also remarkably consistent – his winning time each day was 37.51 seconds, with incredibly similar split times.
AHD displayed uncharacteristic inconsistency – he normally requests that practice times should be allowed to count towards the final points as that’s when he’s usually fastest. However, on both days he posted his fastest times on the final run. |
The three other cars were quite diverse: a 2500M (piloted by Mark “Hank” Hankins); a Cerbera 4.2 (driven by Mark “Harry” Harris); and a Chimaera 450 (shared by Jo Briars on Saturday and Steve “Shunter” Hunter on Sunday). This is where the Speed Championship power:weight algorithm really shows its worth – despite vastly different speeds and handling, all three cars were within a gnats whisker of each other on handicap all weekend.
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Braveness paid off for Jo on Saturday – she was best of the rest as her dab and chuck method stepped the back end round just enough for a brilliant launch out of the corner, knocking 0.7s off her previous personal best. Hank fluffed Karousel in his first timed run, but was back on it for the second run, beating his PB by 2.2s! Harry couldn’t quite match his best time of the day set in Practice (probably because he was elated that he hadn’t spilled egg down his front while eating his breakfast bap) and was relegated to last place.
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Shunter took over from Jo on Sunday, and despite complaining that he couldn’t do Karousel, managed to beat his PB three times during the day, albeit by 0.01s on his final run – with incredibly consistent split times all along his run. Hank continued to improve, and jumped to third place with another PB in his final run. Harry again managed to avoid getting egg down his front, and beat Saturday’s practice time twice in the timed runs to gain reasonable points.
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As our ice creams displayed unsatisfactory consistency (first definition) while we celebrated another fabulous weekend’s motorsport, we decided that this sprinting and hillclimbing lark is consistently (second definition) great fun.
Go on, put some numbers on it. Words: Shunter Photos: Shunter |