NEWS

A fantastic start to the Speed Season

Here is Paul Mullins's write up:

All VSCC events enjoy sound organisation and good company: the variables that make the great days out are how everybody goes out on the track and, in this dear land of ours, the weather. The opening of the VSCC speed championship at Curborough on Sunday 4th May saw a nearly full paddock, sadly depleted by just a few not-quite finished- in-time withdrawals. The day ran smoothly. In morning practice, the marshals saw only one spin, an engine fail and a thrown chain. No one squirted oil on the track either, an early and welcome sign of success of the Club’s ‘let's keep the fluids on the inside’ initiative. In the afternoon, the track got faster, and records fell. Everyone had their two competitive runs - and we were finished by just after four. We are a sociable species and in the VSCC conspicuously so. When an event runs so smoothly we all feel better and, surely, too that helps us go better. On top, the weather was exceptional - and not just be the standards of a sometimes-maligned Curborough. The sun shone. After a cool start, it was shining all day. The breeziness of all one-time airfields was positively welcome, and further cooling was provided when the ice cream van made a daring afternoon visit to the paddock. It even obligingly started to cloud over as everybody exerted themselves packing up. A particular feature of Curborough is the single track road from the paddock down to the start line. Cars go down and come back in batches of some 15 or 20, placing competitors in temporary pristine isolation. It is far enough away for spectators to rely on puffs of white or black smoke coming from the start as palpable evidence that the next run has started. It also gives longer than normal to get a bit wound up ahead of the start. Stuart Yates When that run starts its straightaway into the very long and critical sweeping left hand bend going up the track’s only slope. James Baxter helpfully arranged for his Curborough technique notes to be distributed by the club ahead of the meeting, increasing the worried pre-breakfast pacing of the track. Both driving and observing, there was a sense that success in following James for the first half of the sweeping long left-hander left some of us with a bit more speed than we felt comfortable handling for the second half, where the car goes a bit tippy-toed over the camber change at the top of the slope. Pleasingly, the Curborough nostrum, that if somebody looks fast they are about to spin, did not apply. Congratulations to Michael James who set fastest time of the day in the Riley Cotton Special and Fastest Sport-car in his 12/4 Sprite Rep. If not unprecedented, this must be an unusual achievement. Wilfred Cawley also successfully fired both barrels, winning Fastest Young Driver and Fastest Vintage. The offspring of distinguished club members featured heavily in the results with class wins or second places for William Marsh, Harry Baxter, Rufus Flann, Richard Newton, Wilfred Cawley, Archie Bullett and Ben Collings. At the time of writing, provisional results were not quite ready but I believe a number of class records were broken