Chairman's Chat

Most of my focus for October seemed to be centred on the Pegasus Sprint
and as far as I am concerned we had an excellent event this year.

Follow up:

As
in most of motorsport, it is a team effort that is required to make
any event a success and this event was a tremendous team effort. The
event saw several firsts, Martin Emsley was taking charge of his
first Sprint as Clerk of the Course, following his training and
acting as Deputy at several events, he was the ‘Boss’ for this
one. Martin puts a lot of effort into his duties and he was rewarded
with a well run event, which ran smoothly and seemed to be enjoyed by the competitors. Another first was Nick Wood taking on the role of Chief Marshal. Again Nick’s
efforts were rewarded with an excellent turn out of marshals, many of
them being drivers not doing the event, and I know Nick was extremely
pleased with the support that he received from all those who
volunteered to help. The final first; was the visit of the TVR Car
Club and the inclusion of the event in their Speed Championship. We
had a good turn out of the cars from Blackpool and their championship
coordinator, Steve Cox, told me that his competitors enjoyed the
event and they have asked to come back next year.

The evening of the Sprint, saw the Castle Combe Racing Club Marshals
supper in the Tavern. I received an invitation to the event and the
highlight of the evening was the presentation of the marshal of the
year award. There were five nominations for the award; however the
winner was John Ford who is the coordinator of the Recovery Crews at
Combe. As a spectator of the circuit racing, it has always impressed
me how quick and efficient the Recovery crews are. The speed at
which the trucks get to the scene of the stranded cars and get them
winched up and back into the Paddock is very impressive, so I think
the award is very well deserved. The rescue crews were called into
action at the last race of the year, when the Saloon car race saw the
Mitsubishi saloon of Simon Norris take to the grass on the inside of
Camp Corner, drift across the track and clip backmarker Christina
Lewis in her Peugeot 106, who was keeping well out of the way. The Mitsubishi then spun, dug into the grass and launched itself skywards. I was down at Tower Corner but could see it flying through the air. The Mitsubishi took out the
starting lights gantry and hit the debris fencing that was installed
last winter. The fencing stood up well and the car came down track
side. If that fencing was not there, the car would have been in the
pit road and would have been heading for the Strawford Centre.

This spectacular event was captured by Simon’s on-board camera and we
were able to watch it at the October club night on Chris Goodchild’s
lap top. We also had the opportunity to watch some videos shot by
Andy and Simon Moss of club events this year and Toby and Lisa came
down and showed us some in-car video from their Ford Puma.

Now that Autumn is here, the Navigational events are starting up and
Spence and myself were out on the BMC organised Scatter. One of the
clues took us to a Ford, this time it did not take much persuading
for him to reverse back and turn around rather than risk finding out
how deep it was! November will also see BMC’s Sporting and Classic
trials taking place, so it will be out with the wellies and
waterproof clothing.