GOODYEAR MARANELLO FERRARI CHALLENGE
RACE REPORT : ROUND 6 : SILVERSTONE

PADDOCK STORIES

• Some sort of record must have been broken with the race lasting a miserly seven and a half minutes. Any more like these and they could soon become rounds of the Ferrari Hillclimb Championship. Better still, maybe some of the hillclimb boys (and girl) would like to take in the odd Maranello round as it is all over in the blink of an eye.

• Graham Reeder seems to have the right, leisurely approach. Why bother breaking into a sweat during Qualifying when you know you can wrap up the 'O' class from just about anywhere on the grid. All that passing undoubtedly pleases the spectators as well.

• The Pogson/Andy Christopher clash at Becketts took the usual racers path. Each thought the other to blame and it even went to the official complaints stage. Lacking observers' reports, however, nothing came of it all. Some observers felt a little déjà vu when reflecting upon one or two of last year's incident-prone Challenge cars.

• Speaking of Challenge cars, Mike Golding clearly had a splendid lunch as he came through from 17th on the grid to finish seventh overall - first F355/Ch home and even pipping Marco Attard in the process. Nice change from the early season mishaps.

• One or two competitors were seen walking round the paddock in deep thought having, no doubt, come to recognise certain writings on the wall. Fred Moss was dreaming about an 'O' class 355 and the Christopher brothers were measuring F40s to see if a couple would fit into their transporter for next season.

• Although Alan Cosby (F512M) qualified only 9th on a 1:10.72, he did a 1:04.44 in the earlier Inter-Marque race, which would have been on the pace of the F40s and ahead of Rory Fordyce. The two flat 12s are clearly getting the measure of the turbo cars.