Ten cars around Oulton Park's long circuit is not an immediate recipe for a spectator-pleasing race. Although fields have been sparse ever since the Open series started there has been some good racing and we were keeping our fingers crossed that the Oulton race would bring the same. Of the ten, six were 355 Challenges, with only four cars in the Modified class. There are few brave souls these days who venture down the expensive route of modifying a Ferrari when you can buy an "off the shelf" and more reliable race car like the 355/Ch.

Morning qualifying saw the two men of the moment, Charlie White and Marco Pullen, handily dominate the front, with Charlie way out in front on a 1:51.9 in his 355/Ch, with Marco some 1.5 seconds behind in his ex-Giardiello 328 GTB. Three quite closely matched 355s then followed in the order Tim Mogridge, Mike Furness and Edward Bourn. Alan Cosby's mighty F512M was sixth on the grid but had been suffering from a misfire which it was hoped would be cured for the race. Cosby commented on the significant extra power which had been found after recent engine fettling, saying he was almost a bit spooked by it....

The afternoon race was scheduled for 15 minutes, which would give them about 8 laps around this quite long circuit. On the warming up lap we lost the modified 328 GTB of Tris Simpson - a huge hole in his gearbox casing left a trail of oil round the Knickerbrook area, but all the rest came round for the rolling start procedure.

As the pace car pulled in the two front row men shot cleanly away, with Pullen trying to snatch the lead round the outside of White on the first corner. It looked as though there was a little contact but, unperturbed, the two disappeared off into the countryside and started pulling out a handy lead over all the others.

In the first lap White still held a tenuous lead but it was not to last as Pullen drew alongside past the pits and then dived inside the 355 at Old Hall to take the lead.

These two quickly pulled away from the rest of the field, which was led by Mogridge, Furness, the flying Cosby and Edward Bourn - all of these four in a tight group.

At the front Pullen and White were inseparable, with the lighter 328 having an advantage under braking and in the corners, whilst the more powerful 355 was quicker down the straights. Cosby gradually moved from his sixth place starting position to pull ahead of Furness and, on lap 5, Mogridge. But the two leaders had by then pulled out a 20 second lead and were lapping some two seconds a lap quicker than the rest of them.

Furness lost his fifth place with a last lap spin but managed to get back on the track having dropped two places.

Pullen held on to the narrowest of wins from White, whilst the next three - Cosby, Mogridge and Bourn - finished less than two seconds apart, albeit a long way behind the leaders. Wayne Marrs had a lonely race in sixth place, just managing to keep the recovering Furness behind him at the finish, whilst at the tail end Mike Reeder (355/Ch) and Richard Atkinson-Willes (206 Replica) had another entertaining race-long dice and were barely separable at the flag.

Despite the sparsity of the entry there had been some close racing throughout but quite where the extra entries to rescue this series will come from is a bit of a mystery to everyone. Some of the classic racers have expressed interest in moving to the Open series but that will only serve to weaken the former race series. It seems that the pool of Ferrari racers is a finite one these days and maybe they are being spread around just too many series'.