Southern Autos

Event Report

Duncan Stephens dominated Falcon MC's Southern Auto car trial, the opening round of the BTRDA championship. With our 2009 champion Garry Preston not contesting the event, and in conditions ideally suited to his sporting trials skills, Duncan and his passenger Jade Bray put on a near-perfect demonstration of leading a car trial from the front, finishing fifty points up on closest class rival Bruce Aitkin. Bruce is new to our championship and his undoubted ability in his Citroen AX placed him comfortably ahead of many regulars. Some brownie points to Rupert North for being next up, making use of the long round-trip from Bradford to substantiate his absence from home on Valentine's Day!

Dave Oliver started the defence of his MSA championship by being a clear winner of the rear wheel drive class from Nigel Weeks whilst in Class 4 Barrie Parker and his heavily modified VW Scirocco starred to drop lowest marks but a small class limited him to third overall.

Despite the time away from competition for most of us, the day showed up some poorly running cars, not least of whom Neil Mackay's evo AX GT which retired early in the 2nd round with a failing ignition system and carburation problems; Steve Courts was unlucky to retire with only 3 hills to go.

1 Duncan Stephens (Vauxhall Nova) 64%; 2 Dave Oliver (Hillman Imp) 79%; 3 Barrie Parker (VW Scirocco) 82%; 4 Bruce Aitkin (Citroen AX) 111%; 5 Rupert North (Rover Mini) 121%; 6 Nigel Weeks (Hillman Imp) 126%; 7 Malcolm Brown (Westfield SEI) 138%; 8 Colin Reid (Fiat Panda) 138%; 9 Les Andrew (Peugeot 104) 144%; 10 Richard Tompkins (Hillman Imp) 162%

P.S. A very warm welcome to all championship contenders – in particular newcomers to the championship – and apologies from Neil for not having the time to speak to you all (too much going on!).