The Wessex Sprint - Colerne

Monday 1^st May 2006 – By Andy Moss

As usual at the first major club sprint event of the year there were a number of members in unfamiliar cars as well as those running new machines for the first time.

Among the significant changes were Pete Goodman who was debuting his Lotus Elise, which had replaced the Subaru over the winter. Pete was joined in his car by Dave Cutcliffe who many would be disappointed to find would be without the Van Diemen which is undergoing an engine replacement. Hopefully Dave will be even more entertaining when the new engine makes it debut – we are promised a significant increase in BHP to go with the already superb handling and aerodynamics. Pete put in a superb debut in the Elise, winning the class comfortably – with Dave taking second in class, several seconds behind.

Another car making it's debut was the Fisher Fury of Mark Astin. Marks self built car looking superb in it's orange colour scheme, and very nicely finished as well. After a gap of a round 12 months John Corfield returned to competition. John had sold the well known ex-Goodman/Baker Sierra Cosworth, to allow him to concentrate on an XR2 based project with his son Martin ( an article on the car can be found elsewhere in this edition ).

A familiar face who had not been seen at recent sprint events was Mark Elvin - although the car was the same one we had seen him in at previous events, the move into modified class reflected the huge changes Mark had made to the car – the most noticeable of which was a respray in a bright Green colour normally found on Kawasaki motorcycles.

Among the notable Pegasus performances were Alan Spencer who finished an excellent 9th out of 20 in busy class A1. Spence was joined in A1 by another Mini – this time shared by club members Keith and Melanie Sadler.

Class C2 saw a BPMC 1-2-3, with Mark Roberts taking the honours from Jonathon Milne in the shared CRX, Matt Marples could be pleased with 3rd place in the Peugeot 205. Class E2 also had BPMC members in the top two – Ross Browne taking the honours from Trevor Hartland. Pete Devall also could be pleased with 3rd out of 14 limited production cars in Class B2 – recent modifications to the Ginetta having proved successful.

So with Dave Cutcliffe not able to uphold the tradition of a BPMC member recording FTD at Colerne, it was left to Ian Hall to defend the title. Ian's Darrian is always a superb machine to watch in action, and has no lack of power thanks to the heavily modified Rover V8 engine – but could it see off the lighter Single seater cars ? It seemed unlikely that Ian could see off Kevin Lealan, who had to be favourite in the absence of DC. Ian put in a credible 70.12 on his first run, but it looked as though he would not quite be quick enough. The first attempt at the second run would not count, after Ian was given a re-run – perhaps helped a little by some warmth left in the tyres, the Darrian made it around in an excellent 68.82 and FTD was secured – well done !