Report - Round 11 - 2006 Pirelli Ferrari Hillclimb Championship - Club Racing Series'

<% theSection = "club_racing_series" %> Report - Round 11 - 2006 Pirelli Ferrari Hillclimb Championship - Club Racing Series' - Ferrari Owners' Club

PIRELLI FERRARI HILLCLIMB CHAMPIONSHIP

ROUND 11 : PRESCOTT : 22 JULY 2006

July was a hellishly busy month for the Club's hillclimbers with no less than four rounds of the Championship. The Prescott one-day meeting came just one week after the Gurston Down round but there was nevertheless an excellent 18-Ferrari entry that had been received. Unfortunately there were a couple of non-starters, with Andy Grier and Colin Campbell still nursing poorly cars and Sergio Ransford withdrawing in order to look after his wife, who had suffered a bad fall.

Jon Goodwin was nearly another non-starter, with Lucy the Lusso suffering from a broken gearbox at Gurston but he dipped into his voluminous arsenal, discovered a 430 Spider and brought that along instead. It was to be the UK competition debut of a 430, if you ignore the Michelotto-built GTCs running in GT racing.

Morning practice brought some beautiful weather at first and Prescott was looking at its most splendid for this so-called Bugatti, Classic & Vintage meeting. This was primarily a meeting for all sorts of one-make Clubs, including Ginettas, Porsches, TVRs, Morgans and, of course, the lovely collection of Ferraris - all red with the exception of the glinting black 355 of John Swift.

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Although clouds had begun to gather, the first practice run was perfectly dry and Jon Goodwin set a sensational time of 50.35 secs to be quickest, followed by Nick Taylor (348 GTC), Richard Prior (348), Chris Butler (355) and Christian Mineeff (328).

Shortly before the second practice rounds it began to rain, however, and the Ferraris took to a very wet track in an increasingly heavy downpour. Always a fan of wet-weather racing Mineeff took his 328 up in the quickest time of 57.06, followed by Taylor on 57.62, both of these well clear of Prior, Butler and Goodwin. Jon confessed that he was trying every available setting of the 430's manettino system to find some semblance of grip in the very tricky conditions. Championship aspirant Geoff Dark (308) was lagging a little on 61.55, complaining of lack of grip, and Pauline Goodwin (328) was next on 62.75 - a brave effort considering her fairly bald (but legal) Toyo tyres.

As the Ferraris were returning to their paddock slots the heavens truly opened, bringing torrential rain that swept stones and other debris on to the track in one or two places. This was quickly cleared by the ever-efficient marshals and with only a short delay the competitive runs began in earnest after lunch. The rain had eased somewhat but the track was still awash although the heavy rain had obviously produced a very grippy surface, as the ensuing times would show.

Nick Taylor kept his grip on the meeting with a determined run of 55.09 secs to take the preliminary lead ahead of Butler on 55.55 and Mineeff on 55.88. Prior was fourth on 56.06, just a smidgeon ahead of Dark, who had found a whole bunch of time when compared with his second practice run. Gooders despaired of ever finding the right buttons to press on his 430 but nevertheless set an impressive 57.04 to arrive in fifth place. John Marshall (328) set a very competitive 59.37 sec time ahead of the ever-improving Dave Hathaway (348ts), who was finally forced to put the roof on to keep the rain out. Swifty's 355 splashed up in 61.16 ahead of Pauline Goodwin and Andrew Holman (Mondial), who were barely separable in the 62 sec bracket. Then came two more pairs of cars, with Peter Rogerson (355) and Leon Bachelier (F512M) both in the 63s and Barry Wood (308) and hill-debutant Richard Preece (GT4) both in the 64s.

The rain finally began to ease off and was reduced to just the occasional spot as the Ferraris came out for their second and final runs. A few of the drivers cannily watched the preceding Porsche class and noted that their times were several seconds quicker then on their first run so clearly the track was picking up speed and grip all the time, conditions in which the later runners had cause for grins on their faces.....

Hathaway was the first Ferrari off the line and he immediately showed the improving track by taking almost two seconds off his previous time. Holman did the same but improved by well over two seconds.

Butler was an early runner but it did not go right for him and he only improved by one second to a 54.53 to leave him fearing that that would not be enough to keep a front position and, indeed, subsequent events showed this fear to be well-founded. The seeding of the class left a lot to be desired in that Butler, one of the quickest of the Ferrari hillclimbers, should have been running much later.

Rogerson then knocked some four seconds off his previous time to set a 59.28 and Bachelier manfully slid the huge 512M up the wet track to again go some two seconds quicker than on his previous round.

Mineeff then blasted off, set the quickest split time of all the wet runs but fumbled his way round Pardon hairpin, despite which he set the quickest time so far of 54.52, just one-hundredth ahead of Butler! Wood was the next runner and lopped a huge four seconds off his previous time to end up on a 60.64, a time that was later to be identically matched by Richard Preece, but the former resolved the tie-break in his favour with a quicker first run. John Marshall set a very quick 57.18 time to slot into eighth place but a delighted Pauline Goodwin improved by a massive 5.5 seconds to move in just ahead of Marshall and thus produce what is surely her best drive to date

Swifty improved to a 58.10 to slot in just behind the two 328s in ninth place but now it was down to the final four, who would all be looking for both the overall as well as the PEPs podiums. Dark was first away but his improvement was not enough and he ended up on a 55.60, which kept him down to sixth place. Prior was only a little quicker at 55.29 to take fifth in the class. Taylor was the penultimate runner and splendidly recorded 54.17 in his shrill GTC to take the class lead away from Mineeff. The final runner, the 430 of Jon Goodwin, with all traction aids switched off, then rocketed up the hill, was easily quickest through the split but somehow lost enough time in the second half of the hill to finish second to Taylor by just 800ths of a second!

The overall order therefore was Taylor, Goodwin, Mineeff and Butler but once the PEP factors had been applied it was Mineeff who took the maximum 20 championship points by nearly three quarters of a second from Taylor, with Dark only 600ths behind in third place.

This result leaves Taylor at the top of the Championship table; his best eight scores amount to 143 points ahead of Geoff Dark on 139 but Jon Goodwin has now moved into third on 120, leapfrogging Prior. The next round of the Championship is on 6 August at Hethel but this, unfortunately, is a non-spectator venue so to see all the details just click back to this website.