South west finale and trophy presentation - 27 / 03 / 06

The south west series is over for another year after last weekends meeting in Plymouth. A fairly low turnout of cars still provided a lot of fast close racing throughout the day. There was also a brushless setup being ran in the 1/12ths by Lee Kirby who was visibly struggling with the new equipment all day. Special thanks to Malc this week also for lending me a set of tyres for the day, how good is that.

As normal for Plymouth there was no grip whatsoever in first practice which makes for quite a lot of fun as you drift round. Fortunately later on in practice the car was feeling much better as the grip came up, not before Malc found the barriers in a big way with his Pro 4 prompting what was without doubt quite of the day: “I know there’s a chunk of my car somewhere round here” as he walked back to the scene of his car in search of the front left corner of his car.
			Car number 3, come in, your trophies here ;-)

Qualifying was underway and I actually got off to a good start and for a brief few laps got into the lead but all that did was apparently wake Justin up who then preceded to reel off several quick laps to leave me trailing in his wake! A late crash in the fearsome right left flick in front of the rostrum dropped me back to third near the finish but the car seemed quick on a single lap.

“I’ve just got to keep it between the white bits” I told Sean after the race.
“The barriers are black this week Ross…”
“Ah, maybe that’s my problem…”

Armed with my fresh track information I managed to drive into nearly every barrier possible in the first half of heat 2 as the others improved and relegated me to fourth. Round three went better, six and a half seconds faster than round 1 infact for 18 laps in 300.1 seconds, back upto third.

With all those trophies it must be the season finale!!!

The final round of qualifying didn’t really go so well, I did just get into the 19 lap zone and there were no big crashes or anything, just lots of little errors, couple tenths here, couple there and it all adds up. The result was Justin taking pole ahead of Russ, out qualifying me by three seconds with Malc fourth, a further four seconds back. Lee would like up fifth ahead of Sean, Simon and Jason who was having a good day rounding out the A’s.

After the photos had been taken on the grid Paul delivered his pre race referee speech and we were off into turn 1, Justin led the way narrowly ahead of Russ, myself and Malc, the others getting tangled up further behind. Russ was first to blink when he caught a barrier in the troublesome high speed flick which let me up into second. Russ hadn’t lost much time though and we were racing nose to tail for several laps before I had my own little moment at the same corner as the back end of the car seemed to lock up as I braked which sent me sideways and just wide enough for Russ to snatch back second. Not content with that I stuffed the car nose first into my favourite barrier again a few laps later and after sitting there for what seemed like an eternity a marshal helped me get underway again. Russ and Malc had opened up quite a gap meanwhile and I again got tangled up a little while later when I drove into the already spun car of Simon at a very tight corner of the track.

			All this allowed Lee to close up and we spent the rest of the race seeming to open and close a gap between ourselves as we encountered traffic or had the odd scruffy lap. So at the buzzer it was Justin who took the win ahead of Russ, Malc, a slightly disappointed Ross, Lee in fifth with Sean, Simon and Jason filling the remaining positions. Well that’s how I thought it finished anyway but Paul had other ideas and disqualified Malc’s car which was slightly underweight due to one set of cells being much lighter than all his others so everyone from fourth down promoted a place.
A modified which was to scare the hell out of me ;-)

With this being the final meeting of the year and as we had some time left we decided to hold an open fun race at the end of the meeting. Dad suggesting it would be fun to drop modified motors in, Malc suggesting it would be even more fun not to tell anyone else! Sounded like a plan to me so we took out the 27T stocks and dropped in some 12 turn mods in the hope of blowing Justin’s doors off at least once this season. It’s fair to say our plan was rumbled on the way to the grid though as we blew away my theory that the modern stocks aren’t actually much slower than an older modified motor. Wrong! The slightest touch on the throttle span the wheels and sent the car into warp mode. I spent the first lap driving into everything but gradually got to grips with it again a little more, just don’t use more than a couple millimetres of throttle on the infield and you’ll be fine, I couldn’t help laughing every time I came to the straight and was able to open up the throttle a bit, scaring the hell out of the stock runners as you pulled half a straight on them and then slammed on the brakes to avoid running into them. I’d forgotten quite how fast modifieds were but despite all that pace our laptimes were actually worse than with a stock, that’s how completely undriveable they were on the tight infield section with rather unsuitable rubber tyres. Fun though ;-)

Top three in touring, 1st - Justin Landau, 2nd - Russel Cottam and 3rd - Me! Looks like we're still laughing despite a long tight season :-) (Thanks to Jason for the photo)

So with the racing finished and everything packed up it was time for the end of season trophy presentations, congrats to the following:

(Only displayed drivers are those who completed 6 or more rounds) Drivers like Mike Doody, Malcolm Shears and Mark Parnell just missed out by only completing 5 rounds so find themselves way down the table when they would surely have taken top 6 placings otherwise.

And that's it, another season over. Special thanks to all the racers and everyone who helped make it happen, especially Jason and Paul for covering pretty much every task on a sunday, booking in, organising, scrutineering, refereeing....Cheers guys.

Next week we're back to Torquay for the last round of our local championship before we move outside for the first time on April 9th.

See you there :-)

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