Round 23 - Castle Combe, Saturday 22nd October

Whilst Jes had already been declared 2016 Champion, there were still placings not yet settled up and down the leaderboard.

With a clear plan to knobble his competitors, Capt Chaos very generously offered to put everyone up at his house the night before, pronouncing with inadequately few days left for objections that he had booked his local curry house for dinner.  Upon arrival at Chaos Towers, he further volunteered to drive everyone there in his minibus, thus obfuscating plans to pour copious amounts of Kingfisher down his gullet.

Hence, the early rise for the cold and foggy trip the next day saw several competitors with rumbling stomachs and fuzzy minds, with just one clear-headed and ready for the challenge of Combe.

On arrival, Blower Bream tried to blow the cobwebs away with a spirited sojourn around the track on his nifty fold up bike.  Several others depleted their shoe leather.  But the fog rendered any reconnaissance ineffective for tidy runs later.

True to plan, Chaos put in a blinder in 1st practice that no other car got close to for the whole day.  Probably with closed eyes and no capacity to ponder the consequences, his double-driver AHD posted an identical 2nd practice time, but clearly had his wrists slapped at lunchtime as he couldn’t repeat the feat.

All three Cerb drivers span in 1st practice: Ian was testing the grip at one of his most familiar tracks; James was getting back to grips with his car after a long sabbatical; and Harry was just dreaming about the Big Boy Breakfast awaiting him at the Tavern.  Blower went the wrong way at the first chicane and was last seen asking a marshal which way the track went.

With the exception of Barracluff, everyone improved in 2nd practice.  Dave lost control at Avon Rise, and was fully locked-up heading towards Quarry. Fortunately he had spent the night at the circuit and not in the curry house, so the end result wasn’t as messy as it could have been.

Lunch came and went, the sun finally burnt through the low cloud, and the afternoon presented a fabulous opportunity for the gang to fight for the remaining placings in the Championship.  Chaos led from the front, effectively securing the Class B winner’s place on his first timed run.  By sheer dint of completing a run at his eighth event, AHD leapt up to 5th in class. 

Horsfall, Blacklee and Simonds all managed an improvement on every run, with Gerald achieving his milestone of getting beneath 100 seconds.

The biggest grudge match on track was Harry vs Blower.  A reasonable result at his eighth event would see Harry leapfrog Blower into the Class B top 10.  But a terrible first timed run meant he was still behind.  It was only as the sun was setting and the final times were computated that Harry found out his 2nd timed run was enough for Blower’s position to be reversed; the fading light prevented anyone seeing the exchanges between Blower and Harry, although it was surely just complimentary words of a job well done.

Despite, and maybe because of, the planning, Chaos ruled! Massive congratulations to Mark for both the win here, and for securing Class B.  A consummate lesson in not just preparing for the day, but how to plan for the entire weekend.

Go on, put some numbers on it.

Shunter
(Pictures: Bobbox, Shunter)