Wyre Forest Car Trial

Event Report

In the first of our two Midlands-based trials in June we made a welcome return to the amazing “Orchard” site, with distant views of the Malvern Hills. What we weren’t accustomed to seeing, however, was the long, lush grass that greeted us and definitely no sign of grazing sheep. Just a few head of cattle who were soon contained, except we had to be careful where we walked…

Kidderminster MCC had struggled to find personnel support from within the club but with some networking to secure a full compliment of marshals and the generous offer by our own Barrie Parker to act as C of the C, the trial was able to run under the traditional and reliable control of Mac and Sheila Roath. And so it was, on a day forecasted to be the hottest of the year so far, 25 contestants accumulated in the paddock, 15 of whom were in our Championship. As instructed at the drivers’ briefing, we were despatched to the 3 different start hills, and the competition began.

In the initially very difficult conditions, not helped by the long grass disguising what perils lurked underneath (it was very bumpy!) scores ranged far and wide from quite a lot of 10’s and 11’s through to the occasional 0. In Class 1 the round 1 front runners were the two Corsa’s of Henry Kitching and Trevor Moffatt, with Rupert North only let down by a 9 on hill 8 whereas the Corsa drivers achieved an exceptionally good zero. Rupert managed to nibble away at this deficit such that at the lunch break he was 4 behind Henry and had muscled in front of Trevor by a couple of points. In the afternoon, Trevor fell back, Rupert clawed back the 4 points he needed to level with Henry. This took them to a tie-decider on the greatest number of zeros and another best in Class for Rupert in his cheeky Suzuki Alto. But the best result was still to come…

In Class 2 for modified or older fwd cars, Simon Harris (Golf) continued with his good form and set the pace with a round 1 lead over the generally awesome Saxo VTR of Philip Buckle. Benefitting from seeing many of the other Class 2 cars in action on the hills before him, Paul Myatt in the borrowed Fiat 127 had an encouraging morning, at the expense of Peter Hilleard (106D) and Neil Mackay (Ignis). Then came the afternoon rounds and the sun emerged from the behind the clouds to dry out the ground even more. The round scores then became more palatable and Neil hauled himself up a couple of places to finish 4th in Class, which is probably where he expected to be at the outset given the competition.

Over in Class 3, we were a Liege short because Barrie was officiating, as we know. As has been the case in recent trials, it was essentially a Liege vs Dutton contest, but how would it play out? Mark Hoppe (Melos) threw down the gauntlet in round 1 with a brilliant 17 points, 9 ahead of Dick Glossop (Liege) who was holding off John Charles (Liege) and Kevin Roberts (debuting his Phaeton S1). Over round 2, John managed to level with Dick but they couldn’t reel Mark in, in fact John slipped back a bit. Kevin’s new car looks promising though, with a best in Class score on round 4.

A tough day’s trialling and we remain indebted to KMCC for having the courage to proceed with the event for our enjoyment. Oh! By the way, Rupert in his cheeky Suzuki Alto took their first overall win as an emerging winning combination which we first saw back in April at the Ivinghoe Spring Trial.