500OA 2009 Championship
500OA 2009 Championship
| Circuit Racing 2009 | |||||||||||||
| Mall | Snet | Cad | LM | Mall | BH | Oult | BH | LH | LH | Tot | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driver & Car | 5th Apr | 26th Apr | 31st May | 20th Jun | 5th Jul | 26th Jul | 15th Aug | 31st Aug | 12th Sep | 3rd Oct | 4th Oct | ||
| Class A: 1945 – 1949 e.g. Cooper Mk II-III, Squanderbug | |||||||||||||
| 1 | Richard Bishop-Miller - Cooper Mk II-JAP | 1 | 10 | 10 | 1 | 10 | 32 | ||||||
| 2 | John Potts - Monaco | 10 | 7 | 6 | 23 | ||||||||
| 3 | Rickard With - Effyh-JAP | 10 | 7 | 17 | |||||||||
| 4 | Peter Kumlin - Effyh-JAP | 1 | 10 | 11 | |||||||||
| Class B: 1950 – 1953 e.g. Cooper Mk IV- VII, Kieft, Comet, Martin, Mackson, JBS, Trenberth | |||||||||||||
| 1 | Mike Fowler - Cooper Mk V-Norton/Kieft-Norton | 10 | 10 | 7 | 1 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 58 | ||||
| 2 | Roy Hunt - Martin-Norton | 10 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 42 | ||||
| 3 | Richard Ellingworth - Martin-Norton | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 1 | 39 | ||
| 4 | George Shackleton - Cooper Mk VI-JAP | 7 | 6 | 10 | 7 | 30 | |||||||
| 5 | Rodney Delves - Kieft CK52-Norton | 6 | 7 | 5 | 18 | ||||||||
| 6 | Kerry Horan - Trenberth-Vincent | 1 | 1 | 4 | 7 | 13 | |||||||
| 7 | John Chisholm - Arnott-JAP | 7 | 6 | 13 | |||||||||
| 8 | Shirley Monro - Cooper Mk IV-JAP | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 9 | |||||||
| 9 | Hakan Sandberg - JBS-Triumph | 1 | 6 | 2 | 9 | ||||||||
| 10 | Richard Utley - JBS-Norton | 5 | 3 | 1 | 9 | ||||||||
| 11 | Duncan Rabagliati - Trimax-JAP | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Class C: 1954 on e.g. Cooper Mk VIII on, Petty | |||||||||||||
| 1 | Nigel Ashman - Cooper Mk XI-Norton | 10 | 10 | 1 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 10 | 70 | |
| 2 | Gordon Russell - Cooper Mk VIII-Norton | 7 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 52 | |||
| 3 | Neil Hodges - Cooper Mk VIII-JAP/Cousy Triumph | 6 | 6 | 10 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 10 | 49 | ||||
| 4 | Nigel Challis - Cooper Mk VIII-Norton | 4 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 33 | ||||
| 5 | Martin Sheppard - Cooper Mk XII-Norton | 2 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 28 | |||
| 6 | Darrell Woods - Cooper Mk VIII-JAP/Norton | 3 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 22 | |||||
| 7 | Mike Gilbert - Cooper Mk IX-Norton | 1 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 20 | ||
| 8 | John Jones - Cousy-Triumph | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 18 | |||||
| 9 | Steve Jones - Cooper Mk X-Norton | 5 | 3 | 7 | 15 | ||||||||
| 10 | Mike Bell - Cooper Mk X-JAP | 1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 13 | ||||||
| 11 | Mark Palmer - Wishart Mk II-Norton | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 12 | |||||
| 12 | Dave Lecoq - Petty-Norton | 1 | 10 | 11 | |||||||||
| 13 | Brian Joliffe - Cooper Mk IX-Norton | 6 | 4 | 10 | |||||||||
| 14 | Simon Frost - Wishart Mk II/Cooper Mk X-Norton | 1 | 7 | 1 | 9 | ||||||||
| 15 | Paul Hewes - Cooper Mk VIII - JAP | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7 | ||||||
| 16 | Per Hageman - Cooper Mk XI-JAP | 2 | 5 | 7 | |||||||||
| 17 | Patrick Morin - Cooper Mk XI JAP | 5 | 1 | 6 | |||||||||
| 18 | Geoff Gartside - Cooper Mk VIII-Norton | 4 | 1 | 5 | |||||||||
| 19 | Olle Linde - Cooper Mk X-JAP | 1 | 3 | 4 | |||||||||
| 20 | David Whiteside - Cooper Mk VII-Norton | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| 21 | Stuart Wright - Dastle JAP | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| 22 | Philippe Giron - Cooper Mk IX-Triumph | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||
| Points: 10, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 within each class. 1 point for making the start. Best 7 results to count. The 500 Owners Association Circuit Championship Trophies are awarded for the overall winner, the best JAP engined car (John Turner Trophy), and best non production car (Trevellick Trophy). | |||||||||||||
| The new class system for 2009 seems to have worked well, giving a an incentive to the owners of earlier cars and providing a new dimension to the series, indeed in was class B for cars from '50 to '53 which proved the most competitive with things only being decided at the last meeting of the year. Moreover, though eventually won by Mike Fowler's Cooper Mk V, it was the Martin "twins" of Roy Hunt and Richard Ellingworth which led for much of the year. Their individual stories could not be more different. Richard suffered from new boy gremlins early on with four failures but then took three wins on the trot including one overall win at Mallory in June, confirming his undoubted speed. A third for the Gold Cup and a DNF at Brands brought Richard home third overall, a very respectable first year. Roy started more steadily, a win and two seconds but a DNF at Brands in August and a highly eventful Lydden cost him the championship. Mike missed the first two races due to the birth of his daughter but arrived in style with a class win at Snetterton and then an overall win at Cadwell in the rain. The Gold Cup showed him at his best; third overall after a race long dice with Russell's younger car and, crucially, a couple of seconds ahead of the Hunt, Hodges and Ellingworth dogfight. Another class win at Brands put him in the lead for the first time and a final win at Lydden sealed class B. Another newcomer was George Shackleton who appeared for the later part of the season in the ex Nigel Ashman Cooper Mk VI JAP. His first two races (ever) were at Brands where he wisely drove steadily and concentrated on finishing but at Lydden, for the final two races, he showed genuine pace, his best within half a second of Mike Fowler which bodes well for next season. Mike Fowler - Cooper Mk V Norton. Class B Champion
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The Martins of Roy Hunt and Richard Ellingworth. | |||||||||||||
| Class C for the youngest and fastest cars is inevitably dominated by Cooper-Nortons and is the most popular class with twenty two drivers through the year. The championship was never really in doubt from the off, Nigel Ashman taking the first two overall wins and a DNF at Snetterton only served to give the chasers false hope, indeed by the end of the year he had a perfect score of 70 points. Only magneto problems at Mallory in July and and some over exuberance while trying to retake the lead from Neil Hodges at Brands in September blotted an otherwise perfect year. Next up was Gordon Russell in Pat Barford's Cooper Mk VIII Norton, never quite on Nigel's pace, he picked up six second places plus a win at Snetterton when Ashman retired. In third was Neil Hodges in the JAP engined Cooper Mk VIII plus the loaned Cousy-Triumph at Le Mans. Neil took a class win at Cadwell in the rain and an overall win at Brands in September but four absences meant he was unable to drop any scores and finished three points behind Gordon. All of the top seven cars were Coopers and all bar one Norton powered which makes the presence of JB Jones and the Cousy-Triumph in eighth all the more remarkable. JB put in some remarkable drives in the second half of the season to embarrass the production cars behind him. Nigel Ashman 2009 overall and class C Champion in his Cooper XI-Norton. Photo Callum Golding.
The new class A for pre-49 cars was inevitably the least well supported with only four cars through the year. Unsurprisingly it was dominated by Richard Bishop-Miller in the "Kenya" Cooper Mk II who took three wins to wrap things up. Second was John Potts in the wonderful Monaco, a car which makes everyone smile. There's a real opportunity for any new entrants to pick silverware and perhaps put Richard under more pressure. Richard Bishop-Miller - Cooper Mk II Class A Champion.
Awards were made at the AGM in November 2009 Circuit Racing Awards Overall Champion: Nigel Ashman | |||||||||||||
