Greetings race Fans!

Well the Silverstone Dead or Alive meeting exceeded expectations as far as action was concerned with  an exciting race enjoyed by almost all.

The weather was looking great (for me) as I headed up to Silverstone on Sunday morning with the rain beating down.
Sadly by the time I got to Silverstone the clouds had passed and a dry race was on the cards.

PRACTICE
This passed off relatively without incident and surprise surprise Andy Young was on pole with an even quicker time than last year in his de-tuned MGC…..yeah right.

Simon “Lofty” Cripps and Sandbag Ludlow filled places 2 & 3.

Team Neaves were out in force and I was particularly impressed with the motley selection of trailers they had cobbled together. But by far the best was Stan Neaves’ car 3 which arrived on a builder’s trailer tied on with bits of string.

Sadly this was to be his undoing as he got some brick dust in the engine and was not to have the best of days.

Class A pole was taken by the evil James Walpole once again sporting his lucky Wurzel Gummidge hat.

In an effort to make up all those lost places I had been tinkering with the suspension on my B but due to lack of the folding stuff had only managed to replace the front springs which gave my car a rather jaunty “hot-rod” jacked up rear-end stance.

This was aided by the total loss of diff fluid during practice resulting in the whine of my car drowning out the commentator….not all bad then?

I took advice from several drivers which ranged from side-splitting laughter to “torch the bugger”. I decided to give up my search for another diff in the autojumble in favour of getting as much fluid back in as I could via a Heath-Robinson plastic bottle and tube contraption and hope for the best.

THE RACE
I was overjoyed to find I had qualified behind Brooke Junior (44) and next to the Beaming Burchill in car 13.
Great!

Adopting an all or nothing approach I decided to just floor the gas pedal and see how long the diff lasted.

This was not a bad strategy as it turned out and once more I put my exocet missile 45 degree cornering tactic into good effect and was able to get in front of Burchill by turn one, and after the usual tussle with Brooke Junior I managed to get past him by the last turn on lap one, mainly due to the amount of traffic it has to be said.

From then on I was engaged in the most difficult of tasks as I tried to get past John Wreck-it in car 5. Both of us wanted the same lines on the corners and John’s blocking skills are second to none as we all know.

Despite my do-or-die cornering attempts and also the fully locked up technique I just could not get past him
Two laps to go and as we approached “Bridge” I saw the rear of John’s car step out…aha I thought, he’s right on the limit now and sure enough I managed to squeeze past him and tried to make some ground.

Unfortunately buoyed up with passing him on the last lap I over-cooked it and performed a faultless “doughnut” on the very same corner before “bridge” where I was laughing at John previously.

“Oops “ I said light-heartedly!!!

This naturally let John past but even worse than that Burchill got past too!!!!

DOH!

So that was that, 6th for me well behind the unstoppable Lew Bergonzi who once again was the car to beat in class A, but nobody could. Second went to James Walpole and third to Simon Tinkler who is now putting in almost identical lap times to James this year….still some two seconds faster than I can manage.

The first three finishers overall were Lofty Cripps in 66, (how does he actually get in that car?), Sandbag in car 70 and Varying Hair Length Dave in car 11.

Vic Reeves was fourth, I only mention this as I like to keep calling him Vic and he also sent me some video footage which I have placed in the Youtube section along with some sent to me by Burchill who at least did not manage to film my spin…so thanks for that!

All in all a great race with the usual packed Silverstone grid.

I will put out the pre-Mallory report roughly a week before the next race and it will consist of just 13 lines to mirror the amount of minutes we will have on the track….it takes me longer to get the car on the trailer than that!

If I can find another diff I will probably be there but it would be good to see an entry list in any event….does anyone know if this will be on the 750 website?

If not if someone finds out the list of runners and riders please let me know.

PIT LANE GOSSIP.
Was that John Yea who’s bonnet went up on turn one?
Paul Rigg has stood down from his driver’s repping to spend more time with his trombone.
My doughnut wasn’t enough to get my piccy in Autosport as Lofty & Sandbag are in there instead.
Legs of Doom car 60 now speaks two octaves higher due to his refusal to wear the correct size of race overalls.
Blaine Neaves is considering renting out his overalls to a needy family.
Vic Reeves says his favourite cartoon character is Tweety Pie.

And on that bombshell……that’s all folks!

See you at Mallory on the 2nd…. (maybe)

Jonesey