Round 12 - Curborough, Sunday 30th June
Ninja Warrior
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Located just outside Lichfield, Curborough Sprint Track offers something for everyone. Pleasant location, spectators can view the whole circuit from the single seating area, good food and lots of paddock space. Oh the track you ask – well that’s fast and furious with lots of run off so exploring the edge of grip / ability can be done in relative safety.
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Competing on the longer two-lap course there are five slow to mid-speed corners and two decent straights. This provides a fair fight between the powerful V8’s and the less powerful four-cylinder cars. Bring on our two main protagonists, Steve ‘Moggy’ Mogg and Geoff ‘Iceman’ Stallard. OK, so I just made up the ‘Iceman’ bit.
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More interestingly V8 Griff monster versus four-cylinder Ninja – yes I’ve just come up with that too!
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But who would take the title or would one of the other competitors be a dark horse and steal a victory from the jaws of defeat? John , Pete, David and Shelagh all in 5 litre V8’s or me in another Vixen.
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The day was perfect, warm and dry with a nice breeze to keep the drivers cool. First practice was tighter than I expected with Moggy posting a 65.43 seconds, Geoff came in with a 67.09 and the rest of the field posting between 70.57 – 75.53. Second practice saw steady improvement from most with Moggy finding nearly another second at 64.57 and dark horse John Carter finding nearly six seconds to almost close the gap with a 66.47.
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A well marshalled event enabled all competitors to post a first timed run before lunch with the knowledge of another two timed runs to come after lunch. Dark horse number 2; David Barrowclough then showed his face to post a 68.55 and prove he was also in the hunt for honours, although Pete Ash wasn’t very far behind posting an excellent 69 dead. However Moggy and Geoff were getting into their stride with a 63.81 and 64.84 respectively.
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During lunch the clouds started to break up and the sun soon raised the temperatures meaning the track started to lose grip and after a lesson from Alan in how air density affects combustion performance (he was proved to be correct) most of us posted slower times, apart from dark horse Dave who found another ¾ of a second (how did he do that?) Hustler.
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The third timed run proved to be another backward step for everyone apart from Shelagh and me, who both posted our best times of the day at a 73.89 and 71.54 respectively. I think a fantastic performance from both of us – OK slightly biased.
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At the end of the day and with handicaps applied Geoff took the honours with Moggy just behind. Of course this goes to prove what some of us already knew – TVR built their fasted (and best) cars in the 1960s and 70s!!!
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Hope to see you at Loton.
Steve Thomas (Photography: Shunter) |
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