Matthews Auto Salvage Car Trial

The next event was the Matthews Auto Salvage car trial, returning to the BTRDA national calendar after a few years absence.  Held on a Saturday at the quarry site on Anglesey Island. As a stand alone event it was always going to struggle to attract the more southern base of the national drivers with only a handful of geography close enough to make it.

Yet on the morning of the event 20 people assembled to tackle the 7 sections set out ahead of us. Five of them were what you could call traditional car trialling sections and 2 of them were the very, very underused and often overlooked speed sections. Basically a car trial section laid out on the flatter areas of the field where you run against the clock. The fastest person sets the base time ( a zero on the score sheet) and in this case every 2 seconds slower you drop a mark. There have been other variations of this with bogey times to get to the end of the section. Certainly adds a different element to the event.

For one you can’t change your tyre pressures once you begin, being sub 1 litre in the Alto I normally run on 12 psi, good for the hills but a bit too low for a timed test, on the day I opted for 16 psi still low enough to have some effect on the sections but not to low I roll the tyre of the rim on the fast corners.

The field was very dry and cow trodden, with hoof divots rattling the car all day, the speedo said I did 5 miles and think the suspension did 15K !! The trails section were challenging yet just about cleanable, and the speed tests were great fun, I never got out of first, but I was touching the rev limiter for an odd couple of seconds in places, trying to balance control and speed while slipping and sliding through the section was a blast.

It was the first time I’ve ever really pushed the  Alto since I got it, but my god does the engine rev, it doesn’t have a rev counter being the most poverty stricken car I’ve ever owned! Even though it was made in 1999 it has manual everything. Doors, windows, mirrors the only real thing that separates from a 80’s car is the fuel injection. I was either setting the quickest times or matching them whilst giving away a fair few horsepower.(expect one place).

The second of the speed  tests was a work out!! the last 5 gates to the finish made to go from lock to lock over and over again….. I really needed a knob.

The rain was kind and just about held off for the day, we had maybe 15 minutes where it nearly got going. After 4 rounds were done it was smiles all round, everyone really seemed to have enjoyed themselves. As there were a lot of younger people out too, this event must have had the lowest average age for a while.

Being a dry day the scoring was close at the front of the event, very nip and tuck and ended up going to count back on the number of zeros dropped followed by furthest cleanest. Local man and BTRDA competitor was first overall on the day on marks dropped and I took first first overall with the “index” scoring system applied.

A thoroughly enjoyable day out and an event which will continue to attract  entries in coming years.

Link to a video on the speed test.