A & P Car Trial

Event Report

Day 1 of our North Yorkshire weekend took us to Hawpike Farm, Bolton Bridge from where the views at around 200m were a fabulous distraction and a constant reminder of what is so magical about being in our great outdoors. Rupert North and his stalwarts at Airedale & Pennine MCC had set out a good mix of 8 sections, making use of the hillside’s natural features and the day was supported by an enthusiastic atmosphere, catering, no rain but a day that began rather on the fresh side to become another hot and sticky one. With no recent rain, the hills were bone dry and responded to “burning” in the trials sense, of course.

Within the 21 competitors, it was a pleasure to welcome Chris Morison and his Toyota-powered Liege to one of our championship events and it was equally good for us to come across a new tranche of drivers and passengers.

Just to vary the sequence of report writing for a change and to seek the writer’s five minutes of glory, we’ll start with the diminutive Class 2 in which Simon Harris (Golf GTi) and Neil Mackay (Ignis) were joined by Paul Myatt, reverting to his Yugo 45 after the borrowed Fiat 127 failed to last the distance at our last event. Neil’s learning curve with the Ignis has been challenging, as the car’s engine characteristics don’t suit his preferred trickling style, but the car does rise to the challenge of dry sections and can at times be persuaded to potter on minimum revs. Cutting to the chase, with some measured driving, a lot of luck and the car’s slightly smaller dimensions to a mk 1 Golf, Neil managed to keep a lunch-time lead over Simon and finish 8 ahead on 52 at the close. I should point out right now that this was nowhere near the best fwd score of the day, however, as we’ll see. To complete the picture, Paul did put in some particularly good climbs but the car was probably overcome by the conditions.

Reverting now to the 10-strong Class 1, it was pleasing to see significant local support with Hyundai i10 and Ford Fiesta joining the mainstream Corsa and Saxo brigade. We didn’t quite know what to expect from the local contenders, other than one of our former champions Henry Kitching. But Henry was not on-form; we must have worn him out over dinner the night before? This left the door wide open for our reigning champion Trevor Moffatt in a similar Corsa to grab the advantage and this he did, dropping only 16 points in the morning against Henry’s 39 and a grand total of 31 vs 91. Unsurprisingly, with an index figure of 26%, Trevor deservedly took the overall winner’s garland.

The Class 3 scores were predicted to be low in the dry conditions and indeed they were, making for an intense competition – but actually two-fold with Mark Hoppe (Dutton Melos) coming up against local Brian Colman in a Dutton Phaeton and the pair of them ending the day comfortably ahead of the immediate competition. With so many zero-scoring hills, at the halfway point it was all to play for across the board, with Brian on a very lowly 2, Mark 3, Barrie Parker (Liege) 4, John Charles (Liege) 6, Kevin Roberts (Phaeton) 7 and Ian Nute on 19. After a tyre pressure increase, a few more non-zero scores appeared but Mark and Brian kept their cool on the third round, scoring roughly half that of Barrie and Kevin. All to play for in round 4 (which makes a change when so many events are effectively won or lost in the morning) but Mark dug deep (in many ways) and a clean round secured the class win after Brian dropped a five on hill 1. Next up was Kevin, literally getting to grips with his new car and the 2 Lieges finished on equal points.

The third Liege on the trial was Edinburgh’s Chris Morison’s, but it is currently only eligible for Class 8 with its Toyota engine. Chris competed against himself and was determined to enjoy the day, learn about car trials, get valuable advice from those around him and perhaps put his new-found knowledge to good effect on the Filtrate trial the following day. The 17 clean hills will have done wonders for Chris’s appreciation of what can be achieved and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more from him.

In conclusion, a great new event in our calendar and we look forward to returning next year.

NM