Monoposto Championship, Rockingham 1200,1600 and 1800, 8June2008

'Great men think alike, fools seldom differ'. Quite independently of assistant ed, the editor also chose to write an all inclusive account of Sunday's race at Rockingham.

Qualifying

In contrast to the previous day's weather, Sunday's weather was excellent from dawn to dusk, it was even hot enough for there to be mutterings about tyres 'going off'.

The grid had lost Tony Cotton who had left after Saturday and both Mono1600 Formula Renaults. Tony Davies had a car with an untraceable electrical glitch that was affecting the mixture and despite the best efforts of Tony and others the cure remained elusive. Brian's version was breaking clutch cables, eventually it was assumed that something had broken inside the clutch housing. Like Tony, Bill Janson had gone home but his Jamun remained because Peter Bragg had come up with a cunning plan to get a race, he had been well down the list of reserves, and had taken over Bill's entry for Sunday in a fairly complicated deal that involved setting the car up during testing on Friday.

And so to the timesheet, it was essentially similar to that for Saturday's race. Once again Marc Fortune headed the sheet there being exactly three hundredths of a second difference between his times for the two days. Ewan Sergison was even more consistent with half that difference.

Some hard work resulted in the 1200s of Geoff Jones and Ake Bornebusch being repaired following their last lap collision with each other and the Oval's wall on Saturday.

The Race

The timesheet contained 29 cars and Jock Sergison was going to be the unlucky driver until Dave Brady usurped that position when his car suffered battery failure just before the race. Equally unfortunate was Jim Brockley who left the grid on the green flag lap but whose Formula Vauxhall Junior failed shortly afterwards. An unfortunate end to Jim's weekend, he had dominated the reserve section of the Mono2000 grid on Saturday and it was fitting that he should be racing at our anniversary meeting.

I should explain that the majority of this report has been written from a video recording of the race taken with a camera positioned to view Gracelands. This could well be the most boring corner to record at. I know that exciting racing was taking place elsewhere but cars came through Gracelands in single file on every lap.
The 1200F Jedi of Marc Fortune's lead from start to finish, in the early laps he extended the lead to about 5s but Dax Ward (1200F Jedi) had closed the gap to less than 2s at the finish, and took fastest lap in the process. Initially Steve Cave (1200F JKS) had occupied second spot but he eventually finished fourth behind Dax and Chris Vinall's wingless Speads, Chris had knocked the front wing off when doing a bit of ploughing during qualifying, in his hands a wingless Speads was still fast enough to win the 1200S class. This group of cars initially contained the Jedi of Dave Tilson but he retired on lap 6. Stuart Digby & Geoff Jones were the next two 1200F cars, they were followed by Steven Brooks who had won a battle with Ake Bornebusch for second place in the 1200S class.

Ninth and tenth places were occupied by the first of the car engined cars, this season's inseparable pair: Geoff Fern and Ewan Sergison. Ewan had an excellent first lap and came through with the 1200s but Geoff rapidly caught him and overtook but Ewan reversed the situation a few laps later. Ewan pulled out an advantage of about 3s, only to gift Geoff the win by spinning in the last corner of the lap. It looked to be the best contest of the event, probably the best of the day.
Peter Whitmore and Len Turner in their 1200s were next up having worked their way through the main group of battling 1800s plus the third in class 1600 of David Parkinson. The 1600 Van Diemen of Peter Daly, in standard Formula Ford trim, had been part of this group until it retired on lap 5, Michael Dale made his exit two laps later when he spun off.

Jim Timms lead the 1800s from the start, for the majority of the race he had clear track, especially after he put Geoffrey Cowell in his Jedi between himself and the Jamun mounted Peter Bragg, 3.5s covered this trio at the finish. Geoff Pashley had dropped 20s behind Peter by the end of the race, David Parkinson had closed in and was challenging Geoff for race position.

Douglas Mclay and Patrick Huston had lost the midfield group when Doug inadvertently switched the ignition off as they entered the banking and was nearly rammed by Patrick before he went by. Douglas spent much of the race regaining lost ground. He overtook Patrick at Deene on the penultimate lap, in a three abreast moment with a Speads in the mix.

The 1600s of Richard Evans and Chris Anstruther were next up, they seemed to have quiet races. Not so Peter Collier & Jock Sergison who raced each other throughout, Jock finally handicapped himself by bending a front wing. The final finisher was Mike Hinman. Mike had come through ahead of Jock on the first lap but presumably had a big moment because he had lost an appreciable amount of time by lap two, from that point on he circulated at the back of the field.

Patrick Huston

All pix courtesy of http://www.norwichphoto.co.uk/mono2008/R6 which is Andrew Cliffe.

Geoff Fern and Ewan Sergison were close

So were Patrick Huston and Douglas McLay - discussing the role of the secretary, perhaps?

Marc Fortune

Stuart Digby

Jim Timms and Geoff Cowell

Geoff Jones