Round 13 - Stowe, Sunday 18th June

Cracking the Flags
Arriving at 7am to walk the track, it was already 20°.  Shorts, factor 50 and gallons of water couldn’t stave off the heat. It kept building and building, going way past “gosh the tyres are sticky” to “OMG I can’t hold my steering wheel/gear stick/hans device”.  Way over 30° by lunchtime, would have been delightful sat on a beach consuming ice-cream or sat in a pub garden consuming ice-cold cider.  Sat in a paddock with no shelter, donned in two-layered nomex suits was not the most comfortable experience.  But we battled on heroically for our weekend’s enjoying.

A welcome return to Jes, back after a long children-are-expensive layoff.  Barely a wheel had turned on his Frankengriff since October, so the overlooked winter repairs were being hastily attended to in the morning sunshine.  Leaky rad: radweld!  Broken power steering bracket: bodge!  New rear aero: free waitrose coffee cups!

Jes is consistently lunatic; all five runs starting with a 56 or 57.  The drivers’ briefing warned a particular blue TVR not to throw itself off the track across the finish line.  Jes, mostly, complied.  Just a spin after the line on his second (and fastest) timed run, but the time counted and his first victory of the year secured.

A copiousness of Chimaeras filled the entry list, all bar Rob’s was of the 450 variant.  It was great to see less of Gerald (about 4 stones less!), who beat his PB on the first timed run, and went on to improve it further on the 2nd and 3rd runs.  As with many of the MGCC-run events, value for money is uppermost.  Normally, three timed runs is welcomed with open arms.  But with fibreglass-meltingly hot temperatures, most competitors begrudgingly took to the track for a final time, and only Gerald and Hank managed to improve.

In the blue Chim, Jim showed he had the measure of Richard’s car and the track, going faster than his compatriot all day, and jumping into the 20-points.  Richard beat his 2015-PB (by 0.02s) so still went home happy.

Shunter got roundly beaten by over 2s in the Chimarsala battle last year.  Jo put in a PB on the first practice (and clocked an identical time on the 2nd timed run), showing Shunter how it should be done.  Shunter closed to within 1s on T2, but the competitiveness of the field meant he only finished 5th, while Jo got another 2nd place trophy.

The final, 400, Chimaera was piloted by Rob.  Clearly, spectating here last year gave him all the information he needed to put in a good time.  0.6s behind Jo in practice was halved to 0.3s at the finish.

Despite the fast nature of this circuit, the older ‘A-class’ cars have done ok here in the past. And so it was with Hank’s Vixen-chassised 2500.  Nimble handling, especially useful on the big hairpin and tight chicane, paired with 6-cylinders of pure-Triumph power saw him motor into 4th place, a mere 0.02s behind Rob.  A fab result for his first outing here.

Thankfully, the Stowe complex has an air-conditioned hospitality block, so the prize giving facilitated a much-needed cooling-off period (in the bodily rather than mentally intended use of the phrase).  Then at least half of the TVR competitors headed home with roofs off, avoiding where possible the cracked flags of the nation’s highways.

Go on, put some numbers on it.  Shunter

Photography: Owen Jones & Bobbox