GOODYEAR MARANELLO FERRARI CHALLENGE
RACE REPORT : ROUND 12 : CASTLE COMBE

PADDOCK STORIES

• Throughout the season John Pogson had been the recipient of anonymous threatening letters carefully snipped together from newspaper cuttings. Clearly the worrisome nature of these had contributed to his increasingly haunted look during the season. Rumours as to the identity of the mysterious "Pistol Pete" were finally confirmed when his teammate, Marco Attard, was outed as the sender.

• At season-end many will miss the excruciating PR speak of the Global Beach website as it announced yet another "blinding performance" for "the legendary John Pogson". The highlight had to be when, according to the Global Beach report, he did "a grid-start in neutral" at Croft. He should surely still be sitting there?

• First one to guess why Alan Cosby's 512M and Rory Fordyce's Testarossa were not there at the finish will receive four tonnes of miscellaneous broken gearbox parts. Rory's car cried enough during mid-week testing, whilst the ex Parabolica car of Cosby snapped its carrots during the first race lap.

• Gary Culver's richly deserved Driver of the Year award confirms many a fear. With his rumoured acquisition of a 355 for next year he will surely be unstoppable in the 'O' class.

• Sad to say, Ian Sterling's 308GT4 survived an entire season of, er, sterling 'O' class work only to finish against the barriers on the very last race of the year. The now notorious Quarry Corner was the culprit.

• The Presentation Dinner on Saturday night was a busy affair, with over 160 in attendance. Good guest speakers are clearly hard to come by and the room was treated to a blow-by-blow account of Castle Combe's planning problems.