Silverstone
Silverstone 4 - 6 th June 2010
Potentially we had 27 entries for the two Luffield rounds at this very special meeting celebrating the MGCC’s 60th consecutive appearance at Silverstone. However, we ‘lost’ Ash who was still having engine problems and Zak, who had a family bereavement, our condolences go out to him. Luckily, I was able to get ex Trophy racer and current Safety Car driver Phil Standish in as a replacement for Zak at the last minute. 26 entries matched the best ever grid for a Trophy race in recent years. Graham Ross was good to his promise and his reshelled car was out for the first time following his big off at Brands Hatch, this brought the Scottish contingent back up to three. Our sincere thanks to David Wood of Luffield MG for his welcome (and much needed!) sponsorship of this event once again.
Testing
Testing on the Friday saw most of the Trophy cars present, some doing several of the allocated 20 minute test sessions. A mistake meant that the first 3 sessions weren’t on the right circuit so the 2m 15’s by the quickest had little meaning. A quick shift of some cones at the end of Vale gave the remaining test sessions the true ‘Historic GP’ circuit to play on, those that had tested earlier being given ‘free’ additional slots later on so that all the official boxes could be ticked. Times tumbled as the day got hotter and the Dunlop’s stickier, 2m 12’s and low 2m 13’s for the quickest 190’s. Casualties were few, Andy with an oil filter housing leak, Colin with an exploding steering rack on the last session which left the oil in the wrong place(!) and Ross with fairly serious bottom end engine problems. Stirling work on Ross’s car by Malc and Alex through the night got a bitser engine together and in place by 2am, apparently the night time conversation to keep them going cannot be repeated here !!
Qualifying
The Trophy qualifying on the Saturday was at 10:56 along with the Lancaster Insurance MGOC cars in classes F & Z, these equate to our classes D & C respectively. Early pace setters were Paul L, Colin, Graham, Chris and Andrew. At the six minute point, Doug had also joined these top runners. At the halfway point Andy came in 5th fastest. At sixteen minutes the order was Chris, Colin, Paul L, Andy, Graham, Andrew and Doug. At the end of the twenty minute session, the top five were Chris, Colin, Paul L, Andy and Graham separated by just over 0.8 secs. Chris’s pole time was 2:10.232 on his 5th lap. The class C/D pole went to Paul S., with a 2:17.263, giving him P14 followed by Ross, in P18 (proving what a good job Malc and Alex had done on the engine) and Dan in P20. Interestingly, the fastest MGOC 160 car was timed at 2:18.809 in P17, their next car in P21 on 2:19.913, both MGF’s. Their fastest ZR was a 2:20.466. Unfortunately (I seem to use that word a lot) casualties included Doug on the roof at Becketts on his 4th lap and Julia with a front wheel missing at Woodcote replicating DC’s efforts last year! Garath only managed one lap before fuel starvation problems curtailed his qualifying, this was later diagnosed as a fuel pump problem.
Race 1
Despite working hard a new screen didn’t materialise in time so Doug had to resort to starting with no screen, having also removed the rear window to be eligible to race. 40 cars started the combined MGCC/MGOC race at 15.35 on a hot humid day. Our leading 190 cars soon started to pull away with Paul L taking the lead off Chris on lap 3 only to lose it again dropping to P3 on the next lap as Andy got past him. Behind them, came Colin and Graham. On his own in P6 was Ben who had a lonely race to the finish. Mats only managed one lap before the clutch gave out.
Andrew was relegated from 7th to 9th on lap 4 promoting Simon and Doug. Andrew dropped back to 10th before running out of fuel on the last lap (the least said about that the better!). Eleven seconds behind came Charles and Phil dicing in 11th and 12th places, Phil snatching 9th from Charles on lap 9 as Andrew retired. On the last lap, Andy lost 2 places as Colin and Graham moved through to take third and fourth at the flag. Newcomer, Peter Edney, gave the leading bunch a fright as he dumped oil on the exit of Club, managing just one full lap. Fastest lap went to Paul L as he clocked the only sub 2:10 lap of the race on lap 8 with a possibly permanent time of 2:09.833 to go into the record books.
In the class C/D group, Paul S soon stamped his authority on the proceedings having a lonely race in P12 to the flag. 30+ seconds behind him Dan lead Julia, Ross and David home, this order not changing throughout the race. Having started 26th, Julia finished a creditable 18th overall. Bringing up the rear were Marc and David K. Fastest lap went to Paul S with a 2:17.397 on lap 9. Driver of the race went to Paul L, a trophy he received from Guy Jones, Sales & Marketing Director of MG Motor UK Ltd., who also presented all the other awards.
Race 2
This was to be our first ever reverse grid race, unfortunately when we planned it back in November we had no idea that it would eventually become a combined race. Working out the grid was a real head scratcher as both clubs have different sets of rules for second race grid positions! We reversed the top 11 places down to the first class C car which was Paul S. In order not to give Paul an advantage by starting in the same position I reversed the leading class C cars as well, thereby giving both Chris and Paul S the same disadvantage. The Sunday race at 15.39 again saw 40 cars take the start in this second combined race. Despite starting in 10th position, Paul L got a great start and watching at Copse was awesome ! At the end of the first lap, Paul was already in P1 with Doug, Andy, Simon, Colin, Ben, Graham and Chris line astern. A tangle with an MGOC car on the opening lap saw Phil and Andrew off, Phil recovered to rejoin in last place but Andrew was out with damaged suspension. Phil had a remarkable recovery working his way up from last to 16th before the engine blew on the penultimate lap. Mats also had to retire on lap 3. Chris was up to 6th at the end of lap 2 and a significant gap was already evident between Ben and next placed man Charles at the end of lap 3. Ben slowly got dropped from the leading bunch in P8 and at the end was almost 9 seconds behind 7th place man Simon. The first seven places were a virtual train with just over 2.3 secs. covering them all at the flag. Chris had worked his way lap by lap up to P2 eventually taking this place off the hard-charging Doug on lap 8 who now had all his glass back in place. Try as he could, there was no way past leader Paul in this race, Chris having to accept P2 in consolation. This was a brilliant race, hopefully cementing a reverse grid race into the Trophy championship in future years. Both commentators had the crowd on the edge of their seats with their animated description of the leading seven drivers. Fastest lap went to Chris with 2:10.424 on lap 3, leaving Paul safe in the record books.
In the C/D race another superb opening lap saw Paul S move from his start position of 22nd to 15th passing the three other class C cars that had been reversed in front of him. Paul gradually moved up to P11 which he held to the end once again beating all the MGOC cars to the flag. Dan and Ross dueled with each other for the entire race, Dan passing Ross on the last lap to pip him by 0.22s. Julia came third in the C/D class, beating David Williams, Helen, Marc and David K. Fastest lap again went to Paul S on 2:16.738 beating his race one record by over 0.6 secs. Driver of the race and driver of the day went deservedly to Doug, after his brilliant two races following his earlier misfortunes.
Paul S still leads the championship with 113 points from Chris in second on 103 and Colin third on 90.