WINNING WIGHT JUNIOR, BUT RECORD IS STILL GRACE'S
After a break of two years from the hill after foot and mouth prevented the championship from visiting in 2001, Graeme Wight Junior dominated the day's proceedings at Barbon Manor with a couple of wins. However, David Grace's storming 20.86 second record still stands even after the Herculean effort of the 2002 competitors.
Junior thought he would get the record after the week before's meeting at Prescott, but even in the sunny and warm conditions it was not to be. Man of the meeting award may have gone to Team Tim's mechanic Ian Dayson who mended a broken 1st gear on the blue Gould in record time meaning that although it broke for Coventry's intial run, Mason was able to take his first run off and clinch second place. It was an unbelievable perfomance around the gearbox of the car...
Martin Groves had a 'digging deep' third in the morning but then had a huge moment in the afternoon with wheels on everything except the tarmac around the Oak tree corner... somewhere not advisable to go off.
Rob Turnbull had a good 4th only the then break a driveshaft in the afternoon when coming to the line.
Simon Durling was 8th but then jumped upto 4th in the afternoon.
With a resurfaced hill in the upper part around the last corner which took a little time to rubber-up the times were there for the 1100cc record falling to Adam Fleetwood, whilst Paul Haimes took Tom Brown's record in the 2 litre class and then a 5th and 6th in the run offs - a brilliant performance. Team mate Alan Warburton wasn't far behind Paul though with a 22.82 and 7th in the morning.
Roger Moran was 6th and 5th but with him still only using 80% of the rear tyres with the amount of negative camber, it meant he was driving up the hill with even less rubber on the road as the others. A wiggle through Oak tree said as much.
Mark Budgett awaits his new engine after the 150bhp Suzuki blew at Loton and is therefore running a bog standard GSX-R 1000cc engine giving away some 30 odd bhp to the others, but he still scored points in the morning and importantly beat Adam Fleetwood. It was the only chance for the smaller engined cars to score as in the afternoon it was three 2 litre cars in the run off of larger capacity cars.
Chris Merrick had an enjoyable day and was happy to get into the afternoon points stanza as was Deryk Young for his first points of the year.
Number 10 Trevor Willis had a rose joint pull out on his first class run only to stop, get out of the car and lean over the rear end to investigate what had happened... with his hand on the boiling hot exhaust. It hurt, but he still got into the afternoon run off and was 7th behind Haimes.
Simon Frost was out in his Pilbeam MP62 with a 2.4 litre four pot sharing with Tom New, Simon getting 8th place in the afternoon.
The hill surface had deteriorated a little with a pronounced crown in the road that saw many sparks being struck from underneath the quick cars which saw concerned glances underneath the tubs throughout the day.
Soon after the meeting many packed up their cars quickly to travel the 60 odd miles over the Pennines to arrive at Harewood Hill Climb for the next days action. A real gravy train towards the east...!
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Above photo by Paul Bartram |
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