Sixty & Worcester AutoSOLO

Event Report

A new venue is always welcome and the 60 & Worcestershire MC had searched hard to find a good site after Throckmorton was closed for motorsport. They were rewarded by 45 competitors turning up at Cheltenham Racecourse on the 14th October. This was also the penultimate round of the BTRDA AutoSOLO champion and 8 of the 16 entry in the Nat B part were championship entrants. There was also Dave Walker who was making this event his final one to qualify for the BTRDA Allrounders Championship.

In Class A Alan Wakeman had Richard Pain to contend with and despite Richard’s Toyota Starlet reducing its drag by spending most of the time on 3 wheels it wasn’t quick enough to catch the nimble Micra driven by Alan.

Class B had 5 entrants with the BMW 318i of Haydn Marks setting the pace. Stephen Mather pushed his Clio hard and kept in touch to finish only 9.3 secs behind Haydn. Richard Olsen was also going well in his MG ZR which he shared with his wife Emma. At lunchtime there was just 1 sec between Richard and Stephen whilst Dave had a healthy 3.7 secs lead over Emma. The afternoon tests were all on one layout to save time and the order changed as Emma pipped Dave by 0.1 secs Stephen eked out a second spot by 6.0 secs over Richard.

It is usually the blue Subaru of Mark Benstock and Peter Dickinson who are the only entrants in Class C but Richard Yapp decided to see if the Audi A3 was going to be as competitive. It looked good after Test 1 with Richard ahead of Peter by 0.9 secs only for the Test 2 layout to be better for the Subaru and Richard was 1.3 secs down at lunch. A cone penalty on 2 runs on Test 3 by Peter reversed the order and Richard took a well earned class win.

Mark Summers and Peter Cox were the BTRDA entrants in Class D but both struggled to keep up with the MX5s of past BTRDA champion Steve Conner and Jim Bryant who finished first and second, Steve being FTD of the Nat B event. Mark was a good 3rd whilst Peter in his Honda S2000 beat the MX5 of Rich Welsh after Rich couldn’t get the layout of Test 3 sorted with wrong test penalties.

All competitors finished the day with plenty of smiles on their faces and look forward to the 2018 events on the site.