The weather forecast was closely watched in the week leading up to the event. It started off very promising, but then as always seems to happen with the forecasters, the showers started to creep in. As the day arrived, these showers were forecast for most of the afternoon with a glimmer of hope that they may finish shortly after 6.00 as the competitors were due to arrive. Driving to set up, the rain was quite heavy, although as we approached the venue, it was noticeable that the roads were almost dry. Driving into the field it was great to see it was almost dry and we had escaped the rain forecast.
Following discussion with friends at Sevenoaks DMC, we kept the tests even simpler this time and based them on forward only driving. Six tests were planned using three cone layouts thereby allowing quicker changeover between the first and second test groups. The club organizing team were the same as our previous event. John as Secretary of the Event, Austin Banner as Clerk of the Course, John Davies as Scrutineer and Jenny Morgan marshaling. Gwen Davies assisted Austin with the signing on.
The event was due to run between 7.00 and 9.00. John undertook the entrant briefing at 6.50 and the event was underway by 7.00. The simpler routes assisted our novice entrants and the test routes were completed more quickly.
The event almost achieved a near full entry and 19 cars competed on the day. Yet again, we had excellent support from Sevenoaks DMC and Tunbridge Wells MC with eight cars. We had eleven MGCC members and friends entering, with two who had never entered an autotest before and were enthusiastic to enter the next event. Some members from our last event were away and we are now starting to gather a group of members enjoying grassroots motorsport, some for the first time.
The SDMC and TWMC entrants are all more experienced autotest competitors and were arranged into a separate competing class to the MGCC members. To assist the less experienced entrants, the event included a Production Car Class that allows passengers to be carried.
The Results sheet is appended to this report. Some of the results were very close. In Class B, two of the MGs were very close to the SDMC/TWMC times, and in Class C production cars, less than 2 seconds separated the first three cars/entrants. Alistair Sutton in his MX5 tabled an amazing FTD time, some 9 seconds ahead of the next car.
John Dale, the field owner, called in to see how the event was running. John runs the Capel military Show in early July and arrived towing a field gun and limber behind his Landrover and would have liked to drive round the test routes!
Shortly after the finish we retired to the adjacent Dorking Brewery Taproom for some splendid refreshments and computation of results. At John Dale’s request, we will be making a donation to the RNLI for use of the field for our two events.
We will be continuing next year with our Filching Manor AutoSOLO in the spring and two summer evening Autotests.
The Winners were:-
Fastest Time of the Day – Alistair Sutton MX5
Fastest Lady – Su Gibbard MX5
Winner Pre 1955 MG – Simon Gray MGTD
Winner Post 1955 and non MGs (SDMC)- George Zippo VW Golf
Winner Post 1955 and non MGs (MGCC) – Martin Neal Austin Healey Sprite
Winner Production Cars – Alice Hanson VW Up
