25/10/08
Final Round! Teesside Autodrome.
Teesside is the furthest even for us so we packed up on Friday and headed up to Yorkshire for a brief stop at my parents. As I am still not driving, we had to just tale one car again, and as it was so far we would only be taking one set of tyres. The weather forecast looked showery, and as this is an evening event, probably wouldn’t dry up. However we decided the Toyos were up to the job and decided to keep them on. Phil knew he only had to turn up to win the class championship anyway so the wrong tyre choice wasn’t going to be so detrimental.
Saturday morning arrived, cold and windy although dry, and we set off for our journey to Teesside Autodrome, which was fairly uneventful.
Once there, the organisation was a little different due to a drift event and a karting event being on, so we had to park up and sign on in a different area, and while Phil was getting Humphrey ready for scrutineering, I watched the drifting which looked interesting! We also met up with Matt (Zirax) who was looking forward to his first event in his recently purchased Mk1 MR2!
The event was a little slow to get started, due to the fact it was a dark event so we had to wait for the light to go. The drivers had a break after their two practice laps, and during this break the rain came down! At 6:15 they were ready to start the timed runs, it looked very dark and rather wet.
Additional lighting on car was allowed as long as it would pass an MOT. Phil had replaced Humphrey’s standard lights with the one’s we use on our road cars which are slightly more modern.
I retired to the rather useful café to watch the laps, which had a good view of the chicane and final fast corner. The track layout was the same as the Summer event, which may have helped the drivers in the dark.
The whole event ran smoothly and they were really getting through the runs. Many drivers appeared to spin at the chicane, which at least meant interesting viewing for us spectators! Matt span on the final corner on one of his early runs, however Phil managed to keep the car pointing in a generally forwards direction.
Phil’s times for the day were good, ranging from 56 seconds to just over 60 depending on the conditions of the track. We noticed that the super Starlet had entered however so we didn’t expect a first place in this round! The Starlet was back in full form and had a fastest lap of just over 54 seconds, finishing 6th overall! Matt managed to improve well on his times, his fastest being a 66. It’s a difficult first event but he hopes to compete next season in full. (so do I!)
As expected, Phil received the runner up trophy for the day, but did really well to finish 10th overall.
As this was the final round, the championship results and prizes were also given out. Phil was class winner for the championship with 327 points. This amount of points also meant he beat both winners of the classes above ours, (for engines above 1600cc n/a and for below 1600cc with turbochargers) and finished 8th overall! A great result for our little 120bhp car, up there with cars stating horsepower of 200 and above.
We have plans for Humphrey over the Winter, so this little episode is certainly not over yet. We will be back next year with more power, who knows where that will get us?
