Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) So, have you driven your Morgan today?

I have known Andreas for 40 years. He looked after my +8 for many years in Wedmore near Cheddar in Somerset through the 80s and 90s until he moved to France. Great mechanic

Yep Stephen, and he loves a cuppa and a digestive biscuit. By the way, is your Plus 8 blue ?

The drivers from Ireland and the UK run in a separate event called Saint Goueno Masters, the organisers have a dispensation from the French federation to do so
As you rightly say the technical specs are not comparable. The French tend to follow FIA classes and rules with minimum weights unlike the the UK, the top guys use FIA groupe C cars.
Single seaters are out of fashion with the exception of a few F3 cars.
Several of the leading French drivers are professional, it's quite a site seeing their F1 style trucks containing several cars.

Pigiron .... Ms Image and I went to both the Gubbio and Braga FIA Hillclimb Masters events ....my C4 single-seater not really up to qualifying so went as crew for paddock pals (as it was outside our season a load of the racers treated it as an 'end of term outing' and went over as a gang to support our top drivers ... quite a party weekend! 🙂)

The top guys over there use the big sports-racers like Norma whereas our top guys are all open wheeler single-seaters and ran in a different class ... to say they were turning up at tracks that were radically different from what they were used to (some had to fit bigger fuel tanks just to get to the finish 🙂) ... and being 'first-timers' on long complex tracks they'd never seen before, while the competition raced there regularly as part of their series, the UK drivers were right up at the top end of the overall results, which surprised a few people ... very friendly events, though the top runners there are a bit 'remote' in a F1 sort of way what with being pro drivers ... as you say, big sponsorship, massive support trucks and hospitality ... made our top lads with their little transporters and trailers look small-time (in the UK it's an amateur sport with drivers financing cars and campaign out of their own wallet) ... can safely say we had a whole lot more fun and the speed of the likes of Wallace and Alex straight out of the box had them sweating 🙂 ..... Nicola and Olivia took the ladies crowns at Gubbio and Braga respectively .... we were all made very welcome and had a whale of a time ... we were all really disappointed when they didn't run it beyond the first few years.

K

Ps ... Pigiron ... I presume the 'separate event' at St Goueno is run within the main event ... just separate administratively? .... like how we sometimes co-run A and B licence meetings the same weekend to get round licencing issues in the UK (not called A and B licences anymore as they've been 'improved' by re-naming them with a sentence worth that no-one remembers ... but the practice still continues 🙂)

We have a group of 4 couples that meet for dinner every one or two months. This time one of the group had recent back surgery so he left the Morgan home. He drove his fairly rare Lotus Exel S.E.

Very nice!

I really like the Excel. Only ridden in one once but I enjoyed the experience.

Lovely afternoon outing with DonMog to visit Whatton House Gardens (North West Leicestershire - Near Kegworth which is M1 J24). And the weather was kind to us.

10 GEG members went to the De Haviland Museum near St Albans today . roughly 200 miles driven & of course a great day out.
You have to admire those who flew them & especially the ones fitted with this little gun.

Great GEG day out to visit De Havilland aircraft museum organised by John V6 to whom I'm very grateful.

Well armed Mosquito, one of three they had on display peeking out of hanger.



Massive tank busting cannon with 25 shell magazine installed under smaller calibre nose cannons used for sighting. Weight 800Kg!



Found to be deadly on U boats as well. Recoil from each shell slowed aircraft 20 mph despite being in a dive! Wooden airframe helped absorb the shock though.

Chipmunk, Vampire jet with Venom and Dragon Rapide in background under restoration.



Another Mosquito (first multi-role aircraft) with provision for bomb aimer co-pilot.

A trip to Hever Castle in Kent for their annual car show. Lovely setting, and luckily the rain held off for most of the day.