Lydden again. The Easytrack challenge was close in terms of car contact. Lots of 7's this time. Some grids seemed dominated by 7’s :-). 14 starters in the Easytrack challenge. 13 Caterham's and 1 Westie. Where are all the other 7 types? Lots of fibreglass broken and worse :-( I remained unscathed and put in my best ever time of 44.857. I got a good start that put me in front of Rob G and Graham Booth. I consider myself fortunate to have the car in one piece, in that as when the lights go green all cares about the car pretty much go out the window.

Rob gave me a wide birth! Photo SGSS design

The order was; Doug Newman Hayabusa best 43.727 (42 laps) Alan Maynard Blade 44.276 (42 Laps) Graham Booth Blackbird 44.141 (42 laps) Marcus Thomas K series 44.724 (41 laps) Trevor Phillips BD 44.168 (41 laps) Steve Foster VX 44.857 (41 laps) Mike Jones 7? 45.585 (40 laps) Nigel Bent SV R500 46.551 (39 laps) Geoff Northcott SVR500XXL :-) That's the plate BTW 47.071 ( over heating problems) (39 laps) Graham Wells 7? 48.991 (38 laps) Derek Parker 7? 48.991 (38 laps) Gary Merrit Westie 48.554 (38 laps) John Bird DNF 44.210 Robert Grisby DNF 45.176

Bang. The car came off not so badly! Photo SGSS Design

In the J.T. handicap there were more 7’s than usual too. I had a good start and managed to keep Neil Cordwell 35 and Marucs Thomas 97 and Graham Booth’s Blackbird 7 (no.7!) behind me. Neil kept the others at bay for long enough to give me a change to get away a bit. We were all on the same start flag so a good start was imperitive.

The Pack. Photo courtesy of dd

Worse off was Rob who clashed with someone and broke his De dion tube, trailing arm and trashed the rear wing completely with a big, big dent in the Techcraft exhaust. John Bird went off at the Elbow (don't think anyone else was involved). Alan lost a rear wing early on. I nearly banged wings with a Blackbird jobbie, who got by me and was lapping some 0.7s faster. I chased Marcus and was closing a bit towards the end and was catching a slowing Trevor but 30 mins + 1 lap was not quite enough to get really close to them. I finished 6th.

Alan, Marcus and I. Photo SGSS design

Again fuel being put out on the circuit was a problem for some. The race start was even delayed a short while while a marshal investigated the rear of one car. Next time I need a launch control started egg timer to keep track of time. Pesky Bike engined things, a separate bike engine class I think :-)....

Out of the Elbow. Softening the rear helped with Traction. Photo SGSS design

I was ticking off some of the cars I needed to lap and not sure quite where I had finished but knew it was fairly high up the order as no one had caught me. I could see Charles’ Radical chasing me down but he was still all of Pilgrims & Chessons behind as I was on Dover slope with what could only be a few laps left. In the end Charles and Booth DNF’d so may have had a problems slowing them a bit. On the slow down lap I caught sight of the Fiesta that had managed to stay far enough ahead on those last laps to win. So, 2nd place for me. The Freestyle rear dampers I fitted worked well. I softened them a bit to give more traction out of the elbow. The LSD as fitted to the diff carrier by Phil at Road and Race Transmissions helped massively both on traction and under trail braking. Result, my fastest ever lap time. Nice to see everyone again and the 7 contingent growing.

Geoff and Rob before the racing started