Round two, April 17th 2005 Norton
This round saw the welcome return of Mike Ovens, sidelined in recent months by work and college commitments. Mike was keen to see if he could be the star of our Easter meeting for the third year in succession, despite feeling under the weather. With 12 drivers attending, many making their return, it was clear we were in for a good day of racing on the Donington layout (only decided upon at 2:30PM the previous day!).
First up was class II F1 races with everyone bar John Ovens and Clive Mills using the ubiquitous Tyco narrow chassis. After the first round of heats Mike had posted the best score (18.0) from Jim Kelly and Deane Walpole. He didn't do so well in round 2, struggling in green lane, and the other two leapfrogged him. At this point Deane had fastest lap with 9.08s but 4 other drivers had done times under the 10 second barrier, including Jamie Kelly who was leading the King's Lynn contingent.
Round three was Jim's turn to wobble whilst Mike improved his best score to 18.2 laps, this was however eclipsed by Deane with 18.6 (in green). Most drivers had by this stage posted laps under 10 seconds but Jim and Terry Blackmore were now heavily into the eights!! With the final round approaching everyone had something to play for, with the cumulative score unusually tight all the way down the order.
Round four was won by Terry and Mike (18.0) from Jim (17.8), and this proved sufficient for the returning Ovens Jnr to snatch pole by exactly half a lap from Deane (in turn half a lap ahead of Jim). Terry had nabbed fourth but would need to win the 'B' final if he wanted to make his fourth 'A' final from 4 attempts.
Before that Brain Rogers, Bob Purdue and Clive had to face off in the 'D'. This was won handsomely by the NSCC magazine editor, who didn't once put the car in the wall despite his self-deprecating editorial remarks! So Brian then stepped into the yellow lane and made a good fist of jumping another final with 16.1 laps (much better than he had done in his yellow heat). Unfortunately for him, he came up against a returning Matt Norris who produced a nicely paced drive to take the win.
The 'B' was won by John half a lap ahead of Terry. Up to that point John had been on or near the pace with his Turbo but switched to a Tyco in an attempt to win the 'A'. Ultimately he wasn't quite able to keep up with Jim and Deane but took third ahead of son Mike. Jim drove a stormer, but it also proved that all four lanes were pretty even as he won in green for only his first 'A' final triumph of 2005.
After Lunch attention switched to Class I sports racing. The first surprise was that these cars were no quicker in round 1 than the Class II cars, Jim Kelly leading the charge on 18.0 from Brian (17.1),Terry (16.8) and Bob (16.7). In round 2 something of a gap started to appear with John recording the first 20 lapper, 0.5 laps up from Jim, and only two hundredths of a second away from breaking the 8 second barrier. At this stage the Automatic 'A' final places belonged to Jim, Bob & John Kelly, the remarkable thing being how close things were. P3 to P8 were separated by less than one lap!
Round three saw Deane make a recovery after trailing down in P10 with a new best score of 21.4. Jim helped his cause further with a 19.8 bettered only by Deane and John Ovens. At this stage Jim was comfortably ahead of John and the rest but of course round 4 would see dropped scores come into play. Bob at this stage was only half a lap behind Jim, but of course we had all seen what he was capable of on his debut back in February, so it was not a complete surprise.
Round four saw Terry become the third and last driver to get into the 20 lap bracket and two drivers finally got under the 8 second barrier. In the end, John Ovens took P1 ahead of Jim and Deane. Bob dropped down to 8th after a poorer score in green but, once again, the gaps between the qualifiers were very small so this was a tad unlucky. Worst still this put him in the 'C' final with Jamie Kelly and Mike just as they found top form. Eventually Mike's experience paid off and he won by one lap to take the same green lane in the 'B' final.
By now Mike was in full flow and dispatched Brian, impressive newcomer Simon Beckett and Terry with ease to land himself in the 'A' final and still in green lane. The 'A' final was to be a tense affair with only Jim producing a fastest lap close to what he had done in the heats. The final minute became a game of cat and mouse between Deane and John with Ovens Snr twice getting within six inches of the lead before crashing. Eventually John, whilst quicker, simply ran out of time to Deane's relief! Mike and Jim ended up 2-3 laps back after messy races.
John now leads the overall points table, Deane leads Class I and Class II is lead by Jim. Next meeting will be at the Canvey hall on May 15th with the rules the same as this meeting.
Click here to download the spreadsheet for the day and here for the points tables.
Round one, Feb 6th 2005 Norton
With such a big Oval it was always a possibility that the Tomy Turbo would dominate, as these cars love the big straights. But, initially the Tycos were holding their own, in fact John was buildings cars throughout the day and it was not until round three of the morning races that the Turbo was clearly the best choice. With class II cars allowed to run in class I this really put Terry & John in the pound seats.
John ended up marginally the quickest after qualifying, and chose Yellow for the 'A' final, where he would be joined by Bob in blue and Jim in Red. The last place was up for grabs and the action began with the 'E' final (long time since we had one of those!). This was comfortably won by newcomer Shaun Bennett, despite being in green lane. In the process he beat Jamie Kelly (no relation!) who normally does much better than this at his own clubs' races and so suffered a lot of verbal abuse, which he took good naturedly.
In the 'D' final Shaun again had green lane and came within one lap of moving up again, the race eventually won by Paul Edmunds on 28.2 in yellow lane (a score that was nearly a lap better than he got in his heat on yellow). This put him into the 'C' final, won by Jamie's Dad John just ahead of NSCC magazine editor Brian Rogers. Clive Mills had been having a good day, but the pendulum can soon swing the other way and come the 'B' that is what happened. He'd actually tied Jim Kelly for P3 in qualy but missed the last automatic 'A' final spot, on countback to fastest lap, by a few hundredths of a second. His chances of grafting his way in were scuppered as Terry now had his Turbo flying and won the race by 2 clear laps.
In the 'A' Terry put in a strong drive, but had to battle John Ovens' equally quick Turbo and so lost out by just 2 tenths, with Jim and Bob trailing 2 laps further back. John has been trying to win an EAHORC main final for years, and was elated and relieved to finally do so. Everyone who knows him was chuffed to bits too. The EAHORC tradition of bringing in new winners has continued.
After Lunch, in class I, it became clear that John and Terry were still getting quicker, but others were gamely trying to stay with them. Deane Walpole became the third driver of the day to dip under a 5 second lap, actually posting a 4.59 on his way to a score of 35.1, and in the process became the first UK user of an Artin chassis. At the end of round one he was comfortably in pole position, but after round 2 (where he switched to an MR1) had been bumped by Terry posting a new benchmark of 37.6 with his Turbo, and shaving a hundredth off the lap record.
These two duked it out all the way, with Deane (now using an SRT!) taking a big lead after round 3, only to find Terry had matched him tenth for tenth by the end of qualy. Jim Kelly had not been having a great day by his standards but drove his SG+ flawlessly in blue in round four to up the best score to 38.7 and lower the lap record to 4.36 seconds. This great drive under pressure denied John Ovens the last automatic 'A' spot but Terry took P1 on countback to fastest lap compared to Deane, to uphold Turbo honour.
There have been three sets of father & sons battles in EAHORC history and, on Sunday, we had a fourth. John Kelly had won the 'D' final and so set himself up against son Jamie in the 'C'. Historically, the sons usually come out on top and so it proved again with Jamie beating his dad by 2.1 laps to move into the 'B' race where everyone got squished by John's Turbo.
In the 'A' Terry was always favourite, but had to pull out all the stops. John and Deane faded but Jim Kelly stuck to his task and in the end was just over one lap behind. To complete a perfect sweep, Terry took the lap record and biggest score as well as being declared overall winner on the day (with a trophy to prove it). Not too shabby for his first competitive HO race!
For an archive of our 2004 results contact Deane Walpole