Chairman's Chat

I am now writing the last Chat for 2007, the year seems to have flown by and it will all too soon be over. However November was a busy month and started with the Club Night where we hooked up Chris Goodchild’s lap top and entered the Autoglym Motorsport Quiz. The format of the quiz is that clubs have to enter on line and have a set time to answer 100 questions. Each question comes up on the screen and you have a few seconds to make your selection from the multiple choice answers.

Follow up:

Tim Murray amazed us with his speed in answering the Formula One and general motor racing questions, but we started to struggle on some of the rallying questions. Following the 100 questions there were then three tie break questions where we had to type in the answers. We will now have to wait and see how we got on and if we will progress any further. The club has a good history of competing in motorsport quizzes, we had a strong team in the Castrol Quizzes of the early 1970’s and our own Tim Murray was the 1983 Ford Motormind Quiz champion. With the cheque from Ford, the Club purchased an equipment trailer, which has just found a new lease of life as you can read about elsewhere in this latest Backfire magazine.

On Remembrance Sunday I went up to take a look at the Fedden trial, turning off the road and into the field to make my way to the Paddock area I was followed by this very large Mercedes, it turned out to belong to Colin Hilton, the Chief Executive of the MSA. I later had a chat with Colin and Paul Parker, the BMC Chairman. Colin was keen to find out about the health of our Clubs and what was happening to membership numbers. I was able to report that we were doing OK and that this year we had seen the number of members increase. The event itself saw a full entry of Sporting trials cars and these nimble machines were climbing up the steep banks through the woods. Talking to Clerks of the Course Dave Harris and Tony Streeting, they were trying to find some routes that would stop the top cars cleaning the sections as the ground was very dry underneath the layer of leaves. The winner of the event only failed to clean two hills all day and had a score of two penalty points; that is very impressive driving.

November’ competitive event saw a small number of crews driving around the lanes of West Wiltshire and South Gloucester in Paul Bird’s Nav Ex. Paul very wisely decided to start and finish the event at his local Pub, which meant that whilst we were plotting and driving the lanes he was in the warm enjoying a drink or two. No wonder he was very jovial when we handed in our results sheets and started moaning at him on the clues that we could not find!

We all enjoyed an in-door event when we returned to The Raceway at Avonmouth for the Karting Endurance Challenge. The event has now become the major fund raiser for our chosen charity, and event coordinator, Ken Robson, was rewarded with all 16 teams being filled up. Five drivers make up a team and all drivers have two 15 minute stints on the track. The Raceway had made some changes since the event last year; the viewing area was now upstairs, meaning that everyone had a good view of all of the circuit. This change meant that there was now room to build a Laser Quest room, which was free for us to use. Therefore halfway through the event several of us went and had a game. Nick Wood, Andy Moss and myself seemed to be shooting each other all through the game, but I only saw eventual winner Ken Robson once, where did he hide? Back to the Karting, the event had settled down to see two of the BMC teams in first and second place and one of BPMC teams in third. The final session saw Mark Elvin in the BPMC do his best to take that second slot, but he just could not do it and there were only seconds in it. However the real winner of the night was our Charity – Diabetes UK. As well as the money made on the team entry fees, Martin Emsley was running a raffle for prizes donated by The Raceway. These two combined together ensured that over £1000 was raised on the night. Our thanks go to Russell and the rest of the team at The Raceway for their help and generosity in helping us raise this fantastic sum of money.

The final event of the month was the Allen Trial. Last year I was lucky enough to take part in the event from the passenger seat of Mal Allen’s Marlin Roadster and I had a great time. This year it was back to marshalling and Martin Emsley had the pleasure of navigating Mal. I joined Nick Wood and Bernie Humphrey at Guys Hill. Nick and Bernie manned the stop and restart line half way up the section and I was then further up the hill. I was looking forward to seeing the BPMC drivers, but Alan Spencer in the Parsons Special did not manage to get off the restart line (along with many others I may add) so I only saw him from a distance. However Mal had the knack of getting off the restart line and very gently pulled away and made it to the top of the hill for a clear. On their way back down, I able to complement them about the Father Christmas hats that they were wearing. Mal shouting out that it was all Martin’s idea – I can certainly believe that.

Looking forward to December we have the AGM on the 10th. Martin Baker, our Treasurer, and myself will report on the past 12 months, we have the election of Officers for 2008 and there will be time for you to give the Committee some feedback or ask questions. We will then have a buffet to be followed by the presentation of awards to the 2007 winners. The evening will be concluded with the charity raffle organised by Martin Emsley. Martin would welcome the donation of any prizes for the raffle.

If you will not be able to attend the AGM, then may I wish you a very Merry Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in 2008.