Devizes & District Motor Club

Event Report

After the first round of Group A Liam Rollings and Jamie Yapp were once again the top 2 drivers overall , the same as for the first round of Group B at our sponsors demon tweeks at Wrexham. Both were in different cars although Liam’s Mini looked the same but now has some variable geometry in the front suspension. The mods made the car look very twitchy in morning but was much better on the afternoon runs after some adjustment. Jamie moved from the Nova in Class A to the Clio of Class B for the more open tests laid out by Devizes & DMC’s Chris Foxley at Kemble and kept the pressure on Liam. However the overall placings are not what counts in the BTRDA AutoSOLO championship as it is purely class based.

On a very breezy day with a biting wind at Kemble on the 25th February Jim Bryant stamped his authority on the sports class drivers with a fine class win in his MX5 over local driver Antony Brown. For the other championship points scorers it was their first event with Alexander Smith a fine third with Peter Cox in the Honda S2000 providing a different shape of sports car in fifth spot.
A totally different shape of car was seen in Class E where Luke Dale debuted his Mev Exocet. The car is based on a Mark 1 MX5 and is all open to the environment which gave Luke a good reason to keep his road going crash on to keep out the cold. The car also does not have a heater!. As the only entrant in Class E his points scored was based on combining with Class D where he still scored a credible 7 points.

Back to the saloons in Class B where it started out as a tight battle between Jamie Yapp and past champion Steve Conner now in a Puma. It was close after the first test when Steve appeared to have a bit of a flyer time on his first run but then Jamie opened up the gap and won relatively easily by 11.3 secs. There were no less than 8 championship entrants in this class where Richard Mortimer appeared for the first time in a Mini and ended up sixth. Mark Summers had to retire his Puma with overheating problems.

In Class A there was our first under 25 driver to register points in 2018. Miranda Wakeman shared her father’s Micra to finish third and not too far behind Alan.

With only the best of one Group scores to go through to the final at Curborough which Group will Jamie and Liam concentrate on? We will have to wait and see!