Four Speedmoggers (plus a cameo appearance from Herts member and moggy owner David Gibbs)
assembled in the paddock at RAF Debden amongst an eclectic mix of machinery…
Cloudy skies greeted us but the forecast was for improvement throughout the day. The distinct chill in
the air was soon mitigated with a brisk walk of the long course, from which it was clear that we were in
for a lot of seat time by sprint standards. The course was long, fast and the sections marked by cones
presented a nice challenge that I’d not encountered before.
In practice David went fastest followed by Paul C, then Paul B… Slight “navigational” errors resulted in
Jane and I (Simon C) not getting times.
The first competitive runs saw a similar picture but with improved times from those that posted them.
I managed to get a time although I’d collected a few cones, (one of which I even brought one back to
the paddock under the car sorry dad) and this added many seconds in penalties, Jane nipped the
wrong side of one cone which again denied her an official time but we did see the provisional times
and she’d found lots!
The second run saw no change in standings. Paul C closed to within 3 hundredths of David and Paul B
posted his fastest run. Jane got on the time sheet… I just managed to bring another cone back (sorry
dad) and accrue more penalties.
After lunch saw yet more woes for me with a spin (sorry dad) but despite that I felt I was finally starting
to get to grips with the cone marked sections. Only David had improved his time, opening the gap
back up from Paul C and breaking the 106 barrier with it.
Fourth and final run… Jane found another 2 seconds for her fastest of the day, I made sure I managed
a clean run at least and Paul B put in another consistent time. The real excitement however was with
the front runners, David posed his FTD with another 105, but it was Paul C who really pulled it out of
the bag with a storming run (so much so that the adrenaline was still very evident when he arrived
back into the paddock). He’d burst into the 104s, nearly 2 seconds faster than his previous best.
And with that the day ended… on scratch…
1st Paul C
2nd David
3rd Simon
4th Paul B
5th Jane
Championship positions were in the same order just without David as he’s not contesting…
Ever the sporting Gent and on that basis he waived his 2nd place in the Morgan class on the day…
which meant somehow despite the messiest day of everyone I ended up with the runners up
silverware.
It was a cracking day. Great value, and loads of track time. Really well organised, with 5 runs in all and
still finished in good time. The sun did even eventually make an appearance too… Albeit while we
were packing up.
Many thanks to all organisers, marshals and competitors alike.