Monoposto Championship, Anglesey, 1200/1600/1800, 28 June 2008

Qualifying

One advantage of Anglesey is that with the Irish Sea being adjacent to the circuit, the Beaufort Scale will tell you how strong the wind is blowing; on Saturday it was force 5 to 6. Plenty strong enough to dry the circuit and cool the spectators.

There was considerable discrepancy between the entries in the programme and actuality. Some were not at the circuit: Douglas Mclay, some were at the circuit without their cars: Michael Dale and Geoff Pashley and some were at the circuit with their cars but the cars required fettling. Thus Rupert Reader was using the Anstruther ("purveyors of quality Vauxhall Juniors in 8v and 16v flavours") team facilities, Ewan's fuel system required re-plumbing while the unfortunate Pete Knipe fell foul of scrutineering with a problem that probably started at Anglesey a year ago when he went off. Michael Dale, his arm in a sling, hopes to be fit for Oulton, one suspects that if his car had been fitted with a flappy paddle gearchange, he would have been racing at Anglesey.

With no testing, qualifying differentiated between those with good memories, who could continue to progress from last year's performance and those who had to restart the learning from scratch. With Ewan sidelined for re-plumbing Geoff Fern took the 1600 pole, 2.2s faster than Jim Timms who took the 1800 pole. Tony Davies, after spending much time and changing every possible electrical component had finally found the broken wire that ruined his Rockingham weekend, he was second in class. Peter Bragg occupied the same position in the 1800s. David Parkinson and Patrick Huston occupied third position in their respective classes. The mix of 1600s and 1800s continued with Chris Anstruther, Bill Janson, Jock Sergison, Brian Jones and the 1200 of Geoffrey Cowell taking the final places on the grid.

The silver tongued Ewan convinced the CoC that as he held the lap record, he should be permitted to start. Rupert Reader was also successful in making the grid. With Geoffrey, that made three fast starting cars at the back.

The Race.

While in assembly we were told that the race would run for 13 rather than 15 minutes, the programme was running late and the organisers must have had their fingers crossed that there would not be any incidents. However.....Jim Timms appeared to understeer into the side of Geoff Fern on the first lap at The Banking. Geoff's Van Diemen spun like a top for a 540 and Jim took his damaged Formula Ireland well out of the way. So the race continued undoubtedly to the relief of the organisers and competitors. Geoff rejoined and he positively flew through the tailenders only to come to a stop on lap four with a seized engine, Jim's wing had punctured his radiator and the temperature gauge had mislead Geoff by showing reasonable temperatures as the engine cooked. Geoff's only consolation was setting fastest lap. (N.B. all fastest laps in the Sunday race were lap records).

The leading 1800 driven by Peter Bragg was racing the leading 1600 of Tony Davies with Len Turner's Jedi making the group a trio. This group battled throughout the race but Ewan Sergison, who had made amazing progress from the back of the grid eventually overtook all of them, demoting David to second in class. Ewan was the only unlapped car engined car at the finish.

Rupert Reader's progress was nearly as impressive as Ewan's, he came from the back of the grid to finish second 1800 ahead of David Parkinson and Patrick Huston who finished third in their respective classes. Patrick had been involved in a race long scrap with Bill Jansen, the pair finished 0.9s apart, they were so engrossed in their personal battle that they barely seemed to notice when Rupert demoted them as he overtook in a pack of 1200s. Chris Anstruther was a further 7s back, closely followed by Jock Sergison. Brian Jones occupied last position.

Patrick Huston

Jim heads for the tyres while Geoff spins and spins

1800's pass Jim's stricken FIreland

New to Mono competition was Formula Jedi star Kat Impey.