Another glorious day dawned on Anglesey, this time with less wind and therefore warmer. However, all was not good in the Clarke team; a message from Paul to say that the key to the Land Rover wasn’t working and the AA wouldn’t be with them until 9am. Practice started at 8.30, but they hoped to be with us to take part; no practice no timed runs is the rule.

The double drives of Dave and I were out quite early, with Dave (unusually sensibly) taking it as a sighting lap. Simon C arrived courtesy of transport from their hotel owner to join in at the appropriate time with the others and posted a quick time. As usual Baron Baines was fast, and Ella was heading Chris. Paul arrived in time to be final car in practice, and then with a swift turn around was out for his first timed run, without time to tell us what had happened.

First timed runs proved interesting to Simon C and me, exploring the grassy limits of the track, with Ella a tad slower and everyone else much quicker. Run 2 took place before the lunch break, and this time Ella went exploring the track limits. Simon B clipped off 1/1000th of a second but was still heading the field chased by Paul and Chris. George had his fastest run of the day and Dave was taking seconds off his practice time.

After the lunch break during which Paul told the morning tale of the AA man disconnecting the battery on the Land Rover to reset something which meant the key worked (all very technical and sounds like switching off the computer to fix it), we had runs 3 and 4. Run 3 was a challenge for Paul, whose brakes failed at the end of the final straight, before the hairpin and the finish line. He swung onto the grass in order to slow down and make it round the bend, remarkably achieving a time albeit 20 seconds slower than he had been going.

The technical team swung into action to look at why the brakes had failed and decided to do ‘something’ with the front nearside brakes. It was only when Simon C removed the front offside wheel that the reason was revealed, a brake pad had completely disappeared, and the other was loose. Paul had been very fortunate to slow down at all, and the Clarke team sensibly decided that their day was over. Stunning backdrops of Snowdon

The final run of the day saw Baron Baines, Chris and I achieve our fastest runs of the day, while Ella, Dave and George were tenths slower than their fastest runs. Apart from the Clarke Cars issues, another great day to complete a terrific weekend. Results were (again):

1 Simon B

2 Chris

3 Paul C