StartlineOnLine

Startline OnLine

Track and Race Cars Magazine Monoposto Championship Snetterton 18 October 2009 1600, Classic, Formula and 2000

Qualification

The paddock anticipated the last minute arrival of Team Harrison after an all night session spent fitting a replacement 99 p engine from Ebay. Unfortunately, there was no last minute dash into the paddock, and the chance to write a bit of Monoposto mythology with a championship saving engine swap was missed. One presumes that at this stage Neil had reduced expectations of retaining the championship. He had however left a set of Dallara wheels shod with good rubber for Tristan to use, one could call this Team Harrison’s Plan B.

Dallara numbers were maintained by the appearance of Amnon Needham with his F394.

Tristan celebrated his return to conventional rubber by setting fastest qualifying lap, an impressive 2.3s ahead of Nick's Bowman, Surprisingly, Jeremy's Dallara was third on the grid 0.5s further back. Amnon Needham was next up with a time of 1:11.48s. The redoubtable Richard Purcell demonstrated that a Formula Vauxhall Lotus could still hack it with 1:12.3s. In the 1:13s were Jeremy Goodman, Russell Giles, and Jennifer Scott, the latter in a F4 specification 1800 Van Diemen. Jeremy failed to make the grid following his engine smelling "cooked" in parc ferme. Terry Clark's FVL was the only car in the 1:14s, and then Kevin Mason's Dallara F300, surprisingly far back on 1:16.177. This car represented the year's second entry in Mono2000 Formula, unfortunately, once again it was a solitary entry in this race, the swansong of this class.

Mark Smith's elegant blue 8 valve FVJ, now sporting wings, has taken on the mantle of fastest Mono1600, he qualified ahead of seven 2l cars, something of a surprise given the length of the Revett straight. The remaining 2l cars were in the order: Lenny Coleman, Mark Smith, Louis Watts, Nick Catanzaro, Graham Probyn and Mark Schofield.

Geoff Fern in his faithful RF89 was second Mono1600 but the car seems to have lost speed overnight. The new class champion was third on the grid, with Tony Cotton just behind, Henry Fryer similar FVJ 8v was also in the 1:20s, its good to see this model becoming more popular, Richard Evans, representing Formula Renault, was next up. The rest of the grid relied on traditional cast iron, pushrod FF1600 power. Jonathan Baggott had a for sale sign on his RF87 (how many cars does Jonathan have access to?), Eddie Guest's Lola had the only front radiator in the field, Pedro Ferrera in last year's championship winning Swift 99Z and Sara Hughes in the rare Agent made up the grid.

I watched qualifying at the Bombhole, most drivers passed my viewing position in good order. However, Pedro Ferreira did spin off, he gathered it up, took his time, and rejoined when the track was clear, the safe way to do the job.

The Intermission

Jeremy's surprisingly low third was explained after practice; the 397 was suffering an intermittent problem and Jeremy was worried that it wouldn't finish the race. He needed a finish (no more) for the championship so enquired with the CoC whether he could run Jim's FIreland. The CoC wasn't able to allow this so he started the race in the Dallara. This championship was full of surprises with tension through to the last minute...

The Race

At the start the first three cars got away well, not so Amnon Needham who fell to sixth place. By the time the leading pair got to Bombhole, Tristan had Jeremy's Dallara in his tracks and they were breaking away from Nick Anstruther's Bowman, Nick was to lead the classics throughout the race. Richard Purcell's FVL was in a comfortable fourth place while Russ Giles was disputing with fifth place with Amnon Needham.

Tristan led, but Jeremy only had to finish to take the championship. Jeremy set the race's fastest lap, 1:07.790 on lap 4, but on the fifth lap his Dallara slowed, and Jeremy's race was reduced to attempting to nurse the car to the finish. The problem sounded like transmission failure but eventually the car was pulled off the circuit with reported electrical failure. One point for fastest lap was not enough to take the champion from the absent Neil Harrison.

The demise of Jeremy's Dallara had left Tristan with a lead of nearly half a lap and even though his Dallara had a problem with a gear linkage that left him stuck in fourth gear, he still had a commanding lead of over 32s at the flag. Nick Anstruther took second place overall and the Classic class, he had held second place throughout the race but Amnon Needham was closing in during the last few laps. Amnon had won his tussle with Russ Giles, after overtaking the Reynard he set off after Richard Purcell's FVL, he caught Richard on the penultimate lap, and went past at Russell. As Amnon caught Nick he towed Richard with him; in a few more laps an interesting situation would have developed.

Kevin Mason drove hard throughout the race, and could have caught Russ Giles if he had not gone autocrossing at Coram a couple of laps before the flag. Terry Clark's FVL was slowly caught by Jennifer Scott, but she never got close enough to challenge, the gap being 0.7s at the flag. Jennifer's black Van Diemen was the last unlapped car.

A trio of FVLs followed in the hands of Lou Watts, Lenny Coleman and Nick Catanzaro but the gaps between them were wide and only Nick was actively racing and that was with Graham Probyn's Reynard which finished 0.6s adrift.

Mark Schofield was the final 2l runner.

Nigel Smith had a runaway victory in the 1600 class, chasing Lou Watts 2000cc car over the line. For reasons unknown Geoff Fern's Van Diemen was unable to match his Saturday pace but he still managed to finish a dozen seconds in front of the new champion David Parkinson, who was third in class. Tony Cotton was another who seemed to have lost pace overnight, but once again he had an entertaining race, on this occasion it was with the identically mounted Henry Fryer. Henry got ahead on several times and the pair of FVJ 8v made an impressive site as they rounded Coram side by side. Henry thoroughly enjoyed his race, and it was good to see him finish on a high note after some character building momens in his first year.

Initially, Jonathan Baggott had chased this pair but he slowly fell back to make the trio contesting the final positions a quartet, positions in this group were quite stable until the last few laps and then Richard Evans overtook Jonathan and Eddie Guest did the same to Sara Hughes, Sara lost 30s on the final lap for reasons unknown to your scribe. In a near identical replay of what occurred during qualifying, Pedro Ferrera spun out of this group at the Bombhole in the early laps of the race, his Swift then ran slowly and then retired.

Patrick Huston