JPSC honour was upheld by Jeff Wiltshire in his immaculate 2000cc Phoenix and Mark Cheevers in his lovely (and also 2000cc) Fury, both running in Class A8 (Road-Going Kits over 1700cc), and me in my 1400cc "Marmelade" Striker in Class B9 (Modified Specialist Production Cars up to 1400cc). Astonishingly, all the road-going kits up to 1700cc had stayed at home -- something I don't think I've ever seen before. Benchmark competition came (as usual) from Paul Bowden (A8) in his 1800cc Caterham R400 and the similar (but much lighter) machine of Gerry Fincham, who has to run in Class c12 (Sports Libre) as he has a "one-off" racing chassis.
Practice showed the track to be surprisingly slippery (unusual: Lydden normally has high levels of grip), but we all got round safely. However, Jeff was looking for a problem with his car until he realised we were all having a little trouble staying on the black bit. However, his efforts were sadly prophetic as he did indeed suffer from some diff woes by the end of the event.
The four single seaters were untouchable as usual (aero is really useful with so many fast bends), producing the FTD of 72.25s. But there was a fair spread of times, with the slowest of the fifty cars being over 110s. Good organisation by RMC (who seemed to have borrowed the very experienced TWMC team) ensured that very few cars needed re-runs for catching slower cars.
Of "our team", Jeff gave it all with his ailing Phoenix to produce a second timed run of 86.77s (a full four second improvement on his first run) for third in class and 16th FTD, Mark came in with 84.68s for 2nd in class and 12th FTD. Paul took the class win with a time of 80.67s (7th FTD). Unusually, in the "cross class" competition both Gerry and I managed to beat Paul with times of 79.92s (6th FTD) and 79.17s (5th FTD) respectively. Good game.
What is not so good is the disparity in the "non-road-going" classes. Gerry won Sports Libre by 5s (with the third car 18s off his pace), and my Striker outclassed the small-engined Mod-Spec-Prod field by almost 12s (with second, third and fourth covered by half a second -- could have been a great battle for the pot had I stayed home). The essence of sprinting is competition (which is why Gerry and I have to look "across class"). My advice to anyone starting sprinting in a kit-car of any sort, is to run in a road-going category. There, you are almost guaranteed good stiff competition in your class on the day. The only place I know where you will find serious competition from other kit-cars in non-road-going classes is in the WSCC Speed Series -- and there I think you'd find the word "stiff" an understatement
will this be ready for next year and also which one are you going for?