Greetings Race Fans!

A packed AGM with loads of thrills and spills was followed by a packed Xmas Do with loads of thrills and spills, mainly of beer on this occasion it has to be said.

Ok then, the AGM.  I list the edited highlights with a more detailed version of events to follow shortly…..the shock news  of the day was that Long Haired Dave decided to stand down as co-ordinator to spend more time with his hair.

Dave of course stood in following the abrupt departure of Maggie Yeadon nearly two years ago now and as a result has been unable to race ever since.

The future for the PBIC is now by way of a workers type co-operative, or “committee” which were duly elected in.

The idea being that the workload of the co-ordinator which is a thankless task, let’s be honest, would be shared out by the committee to make life a bit easier for all concerned.

Richard Tinkler has agreed to continue as Club Secretary / Administrative Officer and also will perform the official co-ordinator function of signing off the various forms and documents that the MSA require each year.

Alan Jones of Miss Daisy fame and former co-ordinator of the BRSCC Fiat Challenge will act as Communications Officer and deal with many of the functions of running the series such as publicity - promoting the series etc.

Pete Burchill will continue to keep a tight hold on the purse strings and will continue as Club Treasurer added to this will be a new role of Commercial Officer, working with the committee to utilise his well known blagging skills to raise the profile of the series and obtain any concessions, sponsorship deals and the like to help us all during these hard times moneywise.

The Technical Officer in the shape of Vic Young was re-elected and some whipper snapper called Blaine Neaves has agreed to share the role which should prove interesting to say the least!

Drivers Reps are:

Class A James Darby

Class B to be agreed at later date

Class C Simon Hutchinson

Class D Pete Burchill

You will notice that there are only four classes here, that is because it was agreed by most present that the ridiculously vast number of classes needed to be combined in order to provide proper racing as opposed to trophy collection opportunities.

This format will no doubt need tweaking as the year goes on but at least it goes some way to getting class sizes up and hopes to group cars on their relative performance and lap times - as I understand it - rather than some of the arbitrary ways that classes were allocated in the past. But as I say this will need to be viewed as a work in progress and you can’t please all of the people all of the time as they say.

The main changes are the inclusion of the 3 F’s in class A with class F being abolished unless of course we get another 20 or so cars joining us!

Class D is for K engined cars and I think Pete Burchill offered to be the rep here too.

I am to continue as social secretary (more about the Xmas Do later) and I have been asked to take over the running of the official website!!!!! Fear not however as the vast majority of this will be done by the Comms Officer and that means I will still run the JR Website for the time being at least!

But you can look forward to a brand new Official Website in the very near future with some nice tricks to it and even better than this…..it WILL be regularly updated….interesting weather or not!

There were a few rule changes but in the main they relate to minimum numbers of cars on the grid to allow for trophies to be given out and also no more 3.9 V8’s in class B….yes really!

The Xmas Do

Although we were a little short on numbers which I put down to some drivers being unhappy at the way the series was progressing and also of course cash is getting harder for us all to find, but despite this I have to say the atmosphere was excellent and this was one of the most enjoyable Do’s I can remember.

We were treated to a brilliant DVD roundup of the year provided by Dan Neaves, the sales of which added over £100 to the club coffers. (copies still available and highly recommended for those of you who could not make the Do - just £5 each  featuring 2010 & 2011 seasons )

Long Haired Dave was suffering from man-flu and passed the baton to brother Alan to conduct the presentations, which were very well done even though we only heard half of what he was saying…so not all bad then!

Peter Best sent two representatives to present the trophies too and they seemed to enjoy their evening.

But the true highlight had to be Disco Dancing Champion “Strictly” Rob Spencer. He tripped the light fantastic with those twinkle toes of his from the moment the music started until he was politely asked to leave the dance floor by security.

I half expected Bruce Forsyth to turn up so professional were his moves!

The food was good and the wine was flowing, arggh my poor head the following morning.

Which of course brings me to the now traditional Christmas Caption Competition.

That’s right folks the chance to win some highly coveted Official Jonesey-Racing Merchandise. This year I have been spoilt for choice for suitable photos so I have given you a choice of two;

Have a great Christmas one and all and here’s to an exciting 2012 (can’t wait for Thruxton)

Jonesey

PS Unless I receive those bribes I will publish the others in a new album on the site later this week!

CAPTION COMPETITION: GET ‘EM IN!

Ooher Mrs

What can I say???