Gurston Down Results 070914

With the season fast drawing to a close, this penultimate championship round drew eight drivers to this pleasant setting in the Wiltshire Downs. This was the last meeting of the year at Gurston and it attracts a wide variety of cars from single seaters to saloons and classic sports cars, such as Austin Healeys. The day was warm and dry, the track in perfect condition.

Practice was drama free from a mechanical point of view but, unexpectedly, Fin failed the noise test by a wide margin. However, collective efforts and typical 500 ingenuity, which included a metal pan scourer, improvised additional silencing so when the car was re-measured, it passed with flying colours. Times were good with generally marked improvement between the two practices. There was little in the way of fettling over lunch.

Andrew Forsyth en route to fastest time in the Alfa-Dana

Timed runs
Everyone was looking forward to moving forward again but just before our first run, another competitor shed quite a lot of oil through the tricky Karousell bends. This caused a delay of some twenty minutes whilst great efforts were made to successfully clean up. Everyone made it through unscathed, five clipping small amounts of time from the morning runs. However, the gear linkage on Xavier’s Cooper broke around Ashes, which led to a slow time. Back in the paddock we were unable to conjure up a repair, bringing his day to a close.

The second run saw improvements for all except Mike but no one could catch Andrew, who showed great consistency as well as speed, being the only driver under 42 seconds.

Ted Sharpe's Cooper Mk IV

Results

A lovely relaxed paddock at Gurston

Xavier's Mk V