Sun run was Elan Valley over the trail not along the reservoirs, to Devils Bridge then Tregaron for coffee in Talbot Hotel and a bit of the F1 on tv. Drove home via Abergwesyn road and turned off down past Llyn Brianne to Llandovery. The road was open but closes on weekdays due to logging in the Forest.
My old neck of the woods - used to live a couple of doors down from the Talbot. The Abergwesyn road was always great fun in the winter (but I did have an old S3 Landy in those days)....
interesting. Do you remember the good old days of road rallying when the likes of Alun Rees did some amazing times over the mountains. I know I'm living in the past?
Remember the Motoring News Rallies very well.
Nutcracker, Gremlin etc.
. Great sport until the group 4 cars priced it out of reach.
.+8 Now gone for a 1800 4/4. Duratec in bright yellow.
Took an early train through London down to Southampton to pick up my +8. It's taken just over a month to make it back from the docks in Jersey City. 135 miles in lovely early winter sunshine, roof down back to Cambridge.
1980 +8 Blue And a few others ---------------- Stephen
Took an early train through London down to Southampton to pick up my +8. It's taken just over a month to make it back from the docks in Jersey City. 135 miles in lovely early winter sunshine, roof down back to Cambridge.
Yes, nice day for a drive! I did only about 30 miles today; Tregaron and back. Kept roof on though...
Out for a local drive about forty miles, last one for a good few week's. Put it straight on sorn after arriving home, due to having a knee replacement in the near future. Pointless giving the DVLA unnecessary money.
.+8 Now gone for a 1800 4/4. Duratec in bright yellow.
I haven’t posted for a while ass life has been busy but I thought the TM massif might find this of interest I’m making up for lost time with a long post A while ago I sold my M3W and bought myself a Clubsport the idea being to compete in the Challenge series sharing the car with junior. Needless to say he’s not offered to share the cost.
We managed to make the last race of the season at Snetterton and finished 3 in class in our race and won the pit stop race for our class as Tony Hirst and Craig Hamilton managed to have an argument with one of the kerbs.
So with the first stamp on our novice race licenses it was suggested that we enter the Mission Motorsport race of Remembrance. As the name suggests is takes place over the remembrance weekend and is described as a Remembrance services with a race either side. Now the catch the race is in Anglesey. For our overseas members Anglesey is an island off North Wales in the Irish Sea and in the summer is wet and windy and in November is even wetter and windier.
Mission Motorsport is a charity whose aim to rehabilitate and find jobs for disabled servicemen and women. They run a number of cars at RoR which are maintained and driven by the servicemen and it was humbling to watch them at work.
The idea to attend came from TM member Crunchygears and somehow he managed to convince me, junior, Craig Hamilton-Smith and Tony Hirst and the factory that it would be a good idea to attend. We were in the relay category with a range of Caterhams, Porsches and BMW’s this was split into a number of classes. The plan being we would run 3 cars with 5 drivers supported by the students from Wolverhampton University who support Tony and Craig in the Challenge series.
So the format of the race is arrive Friday and do some daytime qualifying, wait until it gets dark and repeat at night. The daytime qualifying was straight forward enough 50 mph winds of Irish Sea meant having to steer towards the seas. Night time qualify was a little more interesting as the 50mph winds were now accompanied by horizontal rain as the last session instead of being red flagged were under the safety car.
Junior was last but one to qualify and you get some idea of what is was like below, I sent the video to his mum you can guess what her reaction was. Then it was my turn.
After qualifying conditions were so bad that we had to take down the awning we had been using and did debate if the large marque being used for the event would be in place come Saturday morning.
I forgot to add is was roof off windscreen off racing.
Race Day.
Race day arrives and the format is a 3pm start racing through until 9pm. The driver in the last session then starts the following morning, the racing stops at 10.45 for the most important part of the weekend the Remembrance Service restarting at 11.45 and finishing at 4 pm. What could go wrong!
Saturday started off okay but about an hour before Craig took to the track this happened in the garage
and this is what assembly looked like
Over the following few hours the track dried out and we had some good racing but then as darkness fell it started to rain again and it was my tune again ( Oh S**t). I finished my session cold, very wet and thankful that I’d only come off the track a couple of times.
Those that had been before were prepared with 3 foot light bars fitted to cars great when they we’re behind you as you could see the track in front, if you looked in your mirrors you were blinded though. I approach a bend without anybody behind me looked for the marker for the corner and then turned in. Only to find I was the mud pile as it was the wrong marker. After 30 minutes I wondering what I was doing and how I’d been talking to do the race.
Then I remembered why I was there as I was passed by the Mission Motorsport car driven by someone who had been injured in Afghanistan.
We lacked the facilities to dry our overalls and yet again just so Sunday I climbed into my car in nice damp race overalls. This is what assembly area looked like just before the restart on Sunday.
After a while my race was over.
When we stopped for the Remembrance Service I’d estimate we have over 1000 people in the pit lane a humbling experience. So how did we do? My off road antics thankfully didn’t have too much of an impact and our of the 52 starters we finished 22nd and 2nd in our class. Would we do it again? YES we are already booked and will hopefully be more prepared, with more lights and 2 sets overalls.
I need to worry about Junior as he’s faster than me and will be on the heels of Craig and Tony in the challenge series before too long.
Two more stamps on our licenses and only 3 more to go before we take of the ‘L’ plate.
Despite the conditions we managed to have a laugh. Generally at my expense. We were supported by the factory in the form of Mark and Ian. Big thanks from me to Mark Evans who usually gets hard time here as he was the only person to stay on the pit wall in my night session when the conditions were s@@t.
