Castle Combe

Classic Touring Car Racing Club meeting on 24 March 2008 organised by the Castle Combe Racing Club

Freezing Weather but a Red Hot Day for Neil

Neil had a Fiesta drive-shaft break in qualifying. He had a spare but it had the wrong stub axle. Dave Horne made one good one out of the two.

	Gr1 Race Report and Results
	Pre93 Race Report and Results
	Post Historic Race Report and Results
	Full Results (Link to PDF on the MST Site)
	Neil Bray Racing Home Page
	Steve Kilvington's Pictures
	Castle Combe Circuit
	Castle Combe Circuit Aerial View
	Castle Combe Blog (You can page through the entries

Neil had a great day. The Fiesta really flew with its new engine. The work on tuning the Capri's chassis over the winter paid off and Neil was able to challenge for an overall Post Historic win for the first time. The meeting saw great new cars début in the hands of Brian Stevens and David Scriven. Shame that both of the Camaro's blew their engines in qualifying. And as for the weather!

Classic Touring Car Racing Club Winter

Lots of work on the cars over the winter. Concentrating on the Fiesta engine and the Capri's chassis and suspension. Neil had a busy weekend, competing with Primrose in The Lands End Trial over Good Friday and Easter Saturday. Then driving back from the West Country to pick up the racers to get to Castle Combe before 7am on Easter Monday.

There are quite a few absentees from the CTCRC grids this year. The Production BMW's had departed to run their own show as The Easytrack Production BMW Cup. This was probably the best thing for both parties as the aims, objectives, and dare I say age of the drivers, was probably too different for the marriage to have a long-term future.

Of more consequence to the CTCRC was that the BMW's have a new parallel pre-94 series (called Toyo Tires Racing Saloons) competing directly with the CTCRC's pre-93. Unlike the BMW split, this is a rather acrimonious situation with personality clashes galore and even talk of someone's membership renewal being declined. Congratulations to those drivers who remained above all this and drove in both organisations Castle Combe races.

Group 1

Big Cats Dominate but Baby Fiesta Flies


Dave Hickton looks a bit worried before the start while Mark Fowler resorts to the Red Bull	Big ones and Little ones. (Picture by Marc Lawrence)

Neil battles with Dave Hickton (Ascona) and Jim McLoughlin (Fiesta). They both passed the Fiesta before the end of the race but Neil was delighted with his result. (Picture by Marc Lawrence)	There were four big bangers on the entry list but both Camaro's blew their engines in qualifying. Here Brian Stevens gets a bit sideways in front of eventual winner David Howard (Picture by Marc Lawrence)

Neil was out in the Fiesta, taking it a bit easy as this was the first outing for his new engine, and he was using qualifying to run it in. The Fiesta was also out in the pre-93 race where it broke a drive-shaft in qualifying.

Rain was in the air for the race and the track was damp round the back of the circuit. Starting from back in eleventh position on the grid Neil made his normal trials start and was up to sixth at the end of the first lap. By lap four he had passed both Steve Cripps (Ford Escort RS 2000) and David Hickton (Opel Ascona).

Jim McLoughlin had started from pole in his Ric Wood engined Capri but had slipped back down to the middle order after locking up at Quarry on the first lap. He recovered and worked his way back through the field, passing David Hickton at the Esses and Neil at Folly on lap six.

The track had started to dry now and the power of the bigger cars started to tell. First David Hickton re-passed Neil, who started too come under pressure from Davis Margalies (Capri), who had made a slow start. The two circulated together for a few laps before David passed Neil just before the end.

Up front, the two mighty Jaguar XJ12's of David Howard and Brian Stevens were well in control. David winning by just over two seconds come the chequered flag. Mark Fowler held third place for most of the race before being passed by Jim McLoughlin on lap nine and David Hickton on lap ten.

Neil was pleased with his seventh place, punching well above his weight in one of the smallest cars in the field and setting a new lap record in the process.

Click Here for Results

Pre 93

Neil decided to take the opportunity to have an extra race in the Fiesta to speed up running-in the new engine. It was good job he did, as the drive-shaft would otherwise have broken in the Group 1 race!

Neil enjoyed the outing and had a race long battle with Steve Cripps in his Escort RS2000. At one stage it looked as if Neil might be able to hold Steve off but he slipped by three laps from the end and Neil finished in seventh place.

Up at the front Andy Davies took a flag to flag win in his BMW M3, followed by Anthony Wright (Rover Tomcat) and Anthony Gorman (BMW M3).

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Post Historic

Neil challenged for the overall win and could have succeeded but for a spin on the last lap.


Neil heads both David Howard and Steve Primett. he finished second to David Howard after a massive spin just before the finish (Picture by Marc Lawrence)	Brian Stevens fell back through the field after this excursion onto the green stuff (Picture by Marc Lawrence).

The grid was combined with the much faster Classic Modified Saloon's which have a much wider range of mods permitted and are allowed slick tyres. I hope winner Joss Ronchetti and the rest of the CMS guys will forgive me if I concentrate on the Post Historic's.

Neil's Capri went well in qualifying, just how well we didn't realise until the results came out as Neil was first Post Historic on the grid, faster than both David Howard (XJ12) and Steve Primett (Escort RS2000). The winter changes looked to have worked! Both Pete Halford and Al Weyman blowing their Chevrolet Camaro motors thinned the grid out. Tony Crudgington had problems as well and didn't make the grid. Then Anthony Robinson had the misfortune to have his A35 expire on the green flag lap!

When the lights went out Neil was off holding onto Joss Ronchetti for second place all the way round the first lap. Some of the other CMS cars soon went past but Neil was more than a second ahead of David Howard in Post Historic, who was followed by Stephen Primett and Brian Stevens (Jaguar XJ12).

Neil held onto his lead, but as the race progressed both Steve and Brain closed on David Howard, and at one stage the four were within a second of each other. Neil and David gapped the other two as they started to lap the back markers and it looked as if Neil might take his first Post Historic overall win. It wasn't to be though. Coming down Dean Straight for the ninth time Neil had his mirrors full of XJ12 and went a bit too fast into Camp Corner, taking to the grass. Somehow, he avoided hitting the barrier, regained the black stuff, didn't over-correct and managed to end up pointing the right way, still going forward at a fair speed.

While all this was going on David got past. Neil set off in pursuit and closed a little out the back of the circuit but victory was firmly in the hands of the XJ12. Needless to say, Neil and all his team were delighted with the way things went and the way the Capri performed.

Steve Primett was third, followed by Mark Lucock in his RS2000, having overtaken Brian Stevens in his first outing in his new XJ12.

Unfortunately, there were quite a few retirements. Tony Crates had an off song engine all day and stopped on lap three, as did William Jenkins in his desirable BMW 3.0 CSL.

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Added 28 March 2008