Midsummer Madness

David Thompson set a searing pace in his VW Buggy to post FTD at Falcon’s Midsummer Madness Autotest on 9th July. Arnold Lane set the early pace but was thwarted by a double wrong course just before the end. Now all David needs to make his season complete is a clean run on the Edinburgh for his Triple!

We had some interesting new cars at Upper Caldecote. Left - Peter Barker leaving the line under the eagle eye of Land owner Neil Bray in the Mini he shared with Kirean Whatley. Right - Richard Tompkins bought along two Imps. He drove the yellow one himself, entrusting the trials car to Ed Nikel
We had some familiar cars and faces to. Edinburgh organiser Tom Goggin gave his well known Escort a good thrashing while Clerk of the Course Mike Furse points the direction ahead to Falcon Trasurer John Newberry.

Being the day of the men’s singles final at Wimbledon there was bound to be a risk with the weather. The Lord’s one day international was rained off. Pete Sampras and Pat Rafter were on and off court a dozen times, but the weather god smiled favourably on Neil and Allions Bray’s paddock at Upper Caldecote, and we had an uninterrupted days sport, with only a few brief light showers to keep the top surface gently moist.

It was nice to see a few new cars taking part. Peter Barker and Kieran Whatley bought along their Mini to give Arnold Lane a run for his money in Neil’s absence. Neil was suffering from a nasty dose of tennis elbow and sensibly decided to give driving a rest and do a bit of marshalling. Mike Phillips from Bishops Stortford was giving his Nova a run, Bob Tatum from Bedford was in his Fiat Panda and Ed Nikel was driving Richard Tompkins turquoise Imp in his first ever motorsport event. This is Richards’s "trials" car. Richard himself was in his yellow Imp.

Richard got of to a great start with the second best time on the first test, just behind that man Arnold Lane . Arnold started to romp ahead and very soon, it was triple contender David Thompson who took over the chasing role, setting fastest time on test four. But Arnold went into lunch with a decisive eight-second lead.

Arnold continued to romp away after lunch, until it all went wrong on test ten when he went wrong on both runs. This dropped him behind David for overall honours, but still managed to pip Peter Barker for the class win. Ed Nikel was delighted to get third in class on his first event, which allowed Mike Phillips to take the novice award in his Nova. For a while Mike had wondered if he would finish when the blue Nova boiled all its water away, but he refilled it and carried on to the end. Arnold wasn’t the only one to go wrong in the afternoon as Richard managed no less than three wrong courses in his Imp and Tom Goggin managed one as well.

Another good day’s sport, with Mike Furse in charge on this occasion the tests were quite a bit different to drive, even though many of them were Falcon favourites. It’s amazing what different spacing of the cones can achieve!

FTD	David Thompson (VW Buggy)	408.84
1st Class A	Arnold Lane (Mini)	417.37
2nd	Peter Barker (Mini)	428.95
3rd	Ed Nikel (Imp)	443.12
1st Class B	Mike Hayward (Skoda)	483.34
Best Novice	Mike Phillips (Nova)	463.58