ROUND 1 : North Weald: 18 March 2012
by Richard Prior

North Weald airfield in Essex is always the first available venue for a sprint, and as we know what to expect weather wise in mid March it's only the hard core group of competitors who are tempted from their beds on a Sunday morning.

This year we had lots to look forward to though. A new track layout, predicted good weather and three newcomers to the PFHC.

Unfortunately we lost two of them due to car problems, James Spicer with gearbox troubles and Caroline Cooper had a bearing problem in husband Jeff's 360.

Keith Anderson was the third newcomer and did make it to the start line in his red 360 Modena, and as suggested in the regs he happily walked the track with the rest of the Ferrari sprintists.

In first practice Andrew Holman (355) was predictably quickest on 85.54, Richard Prior (also 355) was on 87.99 but it was Sean Doyle in his new 348 who was most chuffed with his time, matching Prior's 87.99 and not too far off Holman's, but a ruling by the track marshalls gave him a 'Wrong Route' which he put down to running wide onto the grass at turn 1.

Mike Spicer was also in contention with his 88.21, which made Holman nervous as he was counting on taking the 20 points today, but the minus 3% factor puts the 328 on par with Andrew's time.

Pauline Goodwin (328) was too quick into the last lefthander and ran out of road collecting a couple of cones, while Keith Anderson was just behind Spicer on 88.64, definitely a promising debut run.

2nd practice started with the usual hot hatches and Minis revving their poor little four cylinder engines to the max but a misshap by a young Peugeot 205 driver who tangled with a gate post caused an unexpected break while the scenery was repaired and any fluids mopped up. The Clerk of the Course called an early lunchbreak for the marshals while the officials sorted the problems. We panicked as rain was promised in the afternoon and we all wanted to get home with dry socks.

After the restart Holman was on 82.86 and pulling away from the rest of the field, Prior was lagging behind with 84.11 but Mike Spicer was down to 85.31 which if practice times were real results means he would be ahead of Holman on points now by a tenth of a second. The 308s of Mark Hargreaves and Barrie Wood had broken into the 89 seconds and Sean Doyle's time had slipped a little, but mysteriously was still getting the wrong route on the scoreboard. This time a track marshal had to come over to slap him on the wrist for persistently cutting the last left hand corner and passing the apex cone on the wrong side. That's why his first time was so quick!

John Marshall (308 GT4) took a different route at the same corner but just as wrong, by going outside of the boundary cones, even though his time was quicker than P1.

At the end of the Ferrari batch though was Jack Hargreaves who had unexpectedly pulled a very quick run in the shared 308 GTB and his 86.04 was potentially a 20 point position. Holman was now very worried.

Tony Attwood had dropped in to support the drivers and update us on the Dino rebuild, and later in the day Mr & Mrs Cooper also came to spectate and see what they had missed. Caroline had even been practicing her starts around the local supermarket car park....

In competition run 1 everybody went quicker, except Mike Spicer who spun at the coned last lefthander and then took a shortcut back to the paddock (explaining why there's a 999 on his time) Sean Doyle now knew the route to take but wiped out the coned chicane at the end of the straight. He knew he'd blown it so when he spun two corners later he just smoked up the rear tyres for some showboating and fishtailed to the finish line.

The official order so far was Mike Spicer (999) Sean Doyle (107.77) Julian Playford 92.39 seconds, Shaun Smith (328) and John Marshall were on 89 seconds dead, Mark Hargreaves 87.77, PG on 87.05. Barrie Wood was over 3 seconds quicker than practice and was next on 86.67, and Jack Hargreaves still performing beyond our expectation with 85.42, then Keith Anderson down to an impressive 84.20.

The top two were now just 4 hundredths of a second apart, Prior on 81.71 and Holman leading with 81.67.

The second run saw a 2 tenths improvement by Mark Hargreaves, 87.57 was to be his best of the day, as was Julian Playford's time of 89.46 in his 355 and Pauline Goodwin also peaked on 86.65 which was to give her 8th place on scratch and points.

Andrew Holman reduced his to 80.94 and Prior was dropping back on 81.50. New man Keith was up to 83.16 and currently 3rd place, Jack's improvements continued at a steady pace, his 84.88 put him just half a second behind Mike Spicer.

The promised rain still hadn't arrived by the final run, but it was only 2.15pm and it was looking good for an early finish to beat the traffic.

John Marshall and Shaun Smith were close together on the last run, John recording 88.14 ahead of Shaun's 88.71.
Sean Doyle at last had a fast clean run with 86.48 putting him into 7th place on scratch, but Barrie Wood was way ahead of him on 84.91 and 8 points more for the championship.

Mad Dog was determined to keep ahead of the Spicer 328 and Prior in his 355. His last run of 79.88 was certain to take the scratch win, Prior was slower this time with 81.92 but sensation of the day Jack Hargreaves put in his best of 83.01 and when the calculators were fired up found that he had taken the 20 points away from Holman with a PEP time of 79.27.

A quick summary showed the happy people on the day were Holman for the scratch win, Jack Hargreaves for maximum points, Barrie Wood for a brilliant 15 points and Keith Anderson who did extremely well on his first event, taking 4th place on scratch (later we found out that he had owned a Westfield in the past and tried his hand at Sprints and Hillclimbs before!) Certainly a name to watch out for in the future.

Trophies were presented and only when the FTD single seater driver gave his customary speech and thanked the organisers did it actually start to spit with rain.

A complete change around on the usual points standing with a 308 leading the championship, especially at a venue always considered to be a power track.

Who knows what to expect for the rest of the season, maybe 20 points for a Daytona at Bouley Bay (if only we had someone brave enough to try it..)