Round 21 - Goodwood, Saturday 24th September

It is often said in motorsport that to finish first, first you must finish. At Goodwood the earlier saying applied, to finish first, first you must start. With eight TVRs entered, three non-starters were always going impact on the spectacle. However amongst the remaining five runners there were some serious chargers, so a good day’s motorsport was still to be had.

Dave Barrowclough had made the long trip down to the South coast to sample the unique attractions of the fastest track we go to, although the driver had not been before his Chimaera in AHD’s previous ownership had done the event many times. Mark Harris is no stranger to the delights of Goodwood, being one of the few tracks he can really stretch the legs of his Cerbera. Jes had managed to enter the Classic Marques class rather than our own, which at least gave the rest of us a chance for a prize on the day. Finally there was Mark Everett and Alan Davies sharing the Captain’s very shiny Chimaera (well he made AHD polish it before scrutineering).

The format at Goodwood is slightly different, with only one timed practice lap, followed by three timed runs. Mark and Jes were straight on it, while Dave almost beat the hundred second mark on his very first lap. Mark decided to enjoy the view when the passenger door opened round the first right hander (suspected as a consequence of a start line marshal activating the mirror button) and it needed a bit of wiggerling across the track to get it to close. While AHD had a surprisingly subdued first run, being over eight seconds behind his co-driver.

With only one practice we were straight into first timed runs before anybody could start thinking about a lunch time bacon sandwich. Biggest mover was AHD who did what he shouldn’t and went four hundredths of a second quicker that his team leader and into the lead. Jes was only just behind these two on handicap, with Dave well below the hundred second mark and the Cerbera bringing up the rear but with all doors closed.

With continuing clear blue skies there was no hope of AHD’s hoped for rain, and second runs were on us after a slightly tense lunch in the Everett/Davies car port. As a double driver AHD was out first and went a bit too smoothly but still took a couple of tenths off his first run time. He then foolishly told Mark this which seemed to have the opposite effect that AHD hoped for and Mark blitzed his earlier time (and his previous PB) to go nearly a second and a half quicker and well into the lead. Jes took nearly a second off to stay third but much closer to the top two. Both Dave and Mark had slower runs, with Mark spinning out of the chicane within sight of the finish line.

Third runs were upon us even before Mark had stopped shaking and he decided to give the last run a miss. This gave Jes and AHD a chance to at least close up to him and improve their scores. While Dave and Mark both wanted to end the day with clean runs.

Annoyingly (for the rest of us at least) Jes did a typical banzai run and took over one and a half seconds off his time to leap into the lead, AHD did a very clean committed run that brought him to within 0.4 of Mark’s time, while Dave did his best time of the day to finish fourth. Mark failed to produce the clean run he needed and disappointedly didn’t improve on his first run time.

So although the class was small, we managed to have a different leader after each timed run, with Jes collecting the red 25 points and getting himself almost within touching distance of this year’s championship.

Alan Hugh Davies (Pictures: Martyn Phillis)