December 2014
I have signed up for the 2015
Hillclimb and Sprint Association championship, in class F, Sports Libre. The championship has a good spread of events throughout the year, some of which I've not been to before, so it will be good to get out and have some fun at some new venues. I've bought my ticket for the Autosport show in January, and will be going on the Thursday, to see if I can grab a bargain. I know which seat I want to replace the seat in the Fiesta with, I just need to strike the right deal. I'm still looking for a tow bar for the BMW, and I need to strip the front suspension down and life all of the aluminium rod ends. And the new engine needs to go to **** for the rebuild. Lots to do, so little time to do it.
The 2015 regs for the service hydraulics speed championship have been released, and they include the same Libre Saloons classes, 4d-4f for the second year. The problem I see, is that the class structure allows space framed Sports Libre saloon cars to enter Libre Saloons. The idea behind Libre Saloons, was to make a seperate class, for engine swapped cars, to encourage people to bring their modified cars out to compete. Which was fine, until space framed Sports Libre cars were also allowed to enter Libre Saloons. The performance difference between these cars, and engine swapped cars like mine, is simply stellar, resulting in minimal points being scored by the engine swapped saloons. The class needs to be changed to exclude space framed cars. I'm not sure what to do now regarding next year's competition. Time to look at a different championship maybe. Or just enter class 4B Sports Libre, and keep away from the Libre Saloons.
Well the Warwickshire 100 12-car was certainly a baptism of fire. Based on maps 139 & 140, the first handout consisted of a set of tulips, so a nice gentle start. The next clue was a narrative, which we had to read, understand and plot the route. Again straight forward. Then a very cunning clue which involved crossing various grid lines in a sequence, which we managed to plot and traverse. Picking up lots of code boards along the way, which instilled further confidence, a few time controls later, it was a herringbone that caused my downfall. The route traversed across the margin of page 139 on to 140, then back on to 139 again, and so on. Very cunning, and it lead to 15 mins of trying to plot the route, which put us OTL. We did traverse the route we'd plotted, but after a while, realised we werent heading in the direction of the control, so decided to cut our losses and head to the pub. Looking back, it wasnt that difficult. It was just the timing was very tight, and although rusty, we were never lost, we simply took too long plotting the clues. I'm sure with a few more events I'd be back on the pace. The Leon CupraR was very capable, and fast. But again, we were in the foggy lanes around Coventry all night, which gave little opportunity to make any time up.
