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Report by Paul Webb
Photo's by Paul Webb and Rob Ransom |
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The two day race meeting on the 6th/7th of October at Snetterton organised by the MGCC was one of the last meetings of the season. The organisers had asked Jim Lowry and Christophe Willmart who jointly run the very successful Virgin Radio Equipe GTS race series to invite some of the drivers from their series to race in three races over the weekend. Three of these drivers were Eastern Centre members, they being our gallant leader Clive Cocks in his WSM Sprite, Paul Woolmer in his ex- John Sprinzel Sebring Sprite PMO 200 and Mick Darcy in his MGB GT ex-Sebring 12 hour race car LBL 591E. |
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The Saturday practice and qualifying put Paul 7th on the grid with Clive on 16th and Mick back in 24th but in his defence his car is set up for road rallying and not for the track.
The first race was on the Saturday afternoon and proved to be a car breaker for a few including Mick who lost third and fourth gears a couple of laps from the end.
Clive posted a 1:34.122 lap bettering his previous best at Snetterton by 8 seconds and bought his Wussum home in 12th place.
Paul was putting a lot of the on paper faster MGB’s to shame by finishing 5th out of a field of 19 finishers and taking the class win.
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Mick’s gearbox problem pointed towards the selector fork coming lose on the shaft. It was felt that maybe all was not lost and after a chat with Ron Gammon it was decided that the selector fork could probabley be accessed via a gearbox side cover without having to remove the gearbox. As Mick was entered for two races on the Sunday, LBL was taken down to the Brown and Gammon’s pit lane garage to try and rectify the problem which they duly did as Mick was on the starting grid for the Sunday morning race.
PMO was only racing on the Saturday so after the prize giving we packed up PMO, said our goodbye's and headed for home. |
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Sunday morning’s race was not a good one for Clive. While on lap one and coming out of Russell Bend, the back of the WSM got away and Clive spun but unfortunately Chris Dady in his Elva Courier did not avoid Clive hitting him hard on the offside front wheel ripping off Clive’s bonnet damaging the sill and punching a large dent in the offside rear wing. |
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When Clive got back to the paddock and looked over the damage, he then found about a 3rd of his offside front brake disc missing. This proved a bit of a mystery at first but when Clive checked over the damaged corner at home it was found that the chassis was bent at the wishbone mounting and cross member as was the wishbone itself which probable meant that the brake disc shattered with the shock of the impact. Well at least he has something to occupy him over the long winter months now.
Mick’s third race of the weekend was the 4 hour relay race in the afternoon. After the earlier gearbox problems Mick and his relay team took things a little easier than they would have like but they bought LBL home mid-field to round off an eventful weekends racing. |
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