New season, new start, new faces, new enthusiasm.

What could be better for the start of the season than to awaken to glorious March sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky, same as its been for two weeks now. Alas the sight of an empty trailer behind my tow car soon brought me back to Earth - due to a very last minute hitch with the electrics the Y10 is still with Motorsport Engineering. Same disappointment as last year then!

Practice happened without me - both as a competitor and as a spectator. The turn out was diappointing, a lot of familiar faces from last year missing - time will tell if like me, the cars were just not ready, or whether their absence is more permanent. As with most new years, a couple of newcomers were welcomed to the series, most interesting of which were Stuart Rolt in a Lancia 037 and Phil Burton in a Ferrari 360 Challenge car.

Qualifying seems to have shaped up much as expected. Phil Burton's Ferrari headed the charts, of more relevance to me was that Tim Lewis had out qualified Andy Thompson's Minari in Class B, signifying that maybe the goalposts were moving further ahead. Andy only joined Class B midway through last season and showed immediately to be the force within the class, even winning two races outright. Further down the times were the novel entry from Bryn Griffiths with a DIESEL Alfa Romeo 156 Sportwagon. The rules allow for any size diesel engined car to compete in Class E, nominally the up to 1500cc class. Volkswagen pioneered the racing of a Diesel car in the UK, the 2.4JTD engine should prove an interesting powerplant.

As would be expected for the first meeting of the season, not everyone had things problem free. Fellow Class B competitors Julian Brown and Phil Thompson had problems, Julian's X1/9 overheating due to water pump problems, Phil's Panda having a crankcase breather problem building up pressure within the engine.

The first race started in mid afternoon, with a grid of just 13 cars following the demise of Julian's X1/9. Thankfully the start was not as eventful as in the corresponding race last year, but Ian Muller still found himself pointing the wrong way at the bottom of Paddock bend and had to chase the pack from the rear. Phil Thompson had an even shorter race - within 100 metres of the start line, the Panda went bang as a hole appeared in the side of the engine.

Newcomer Phil Burton might have had the fastest car on the track, but as a reverse grid novice, he had been boxed in at the start and was well down the field after the first lap. Tim Lewis broke free and looked to be getting the better of Andy Thompson, who made an uncharacteristic bad start, but Andy gradually reeled him before out braking him into Druids, only to be out-powered down the long straight. The Ferrari came into play catching them both before Tim made a mistake at Clearways that allowed Andy to get away and consolidate second place. Nick Sismey's Alfa Romeo 33 expired with 2 laps to go leaving just the 11 finishers. On the face of things Stuart Rolt's Lancia 037 looked slow until I realised he was racing on road tyres, everyone else was on slicks - but the sound of that supercharged engine was something else. Hopefully we'll see him out with us again.

The race ended, Phil Burton first with the Minari just 2 seconds behind, and Tim Lewis just 6 seconds further back - clearly these two are going to be tough for me to beat. Ian Stapleton was running under the revised Class C rules this year but was sadly a lone entrant in class today, he finished 5th overall.

The second race was later in the afternoon, by now the grid was down to 10 cars as the two non-finishers from race 1 were unable to start, and we also lost the Lancia 037 with clutch problems. A good start from the remaining Class B guys saw Tim Lewis and Andy Thompson make an early break, the Ferrari again getting left behind. Five laps in and it looked like this was going to be a Minari win, Andy Thompson having got the better the Tim Lewis quite comfortably this race, and the Ferrari seemed to be having difficulties in closing the gap. However, there had been an oil spillage at Graham Hill in an earlier race and Andy was taking this corner more circumspectly than is his norm which allowed the 360 to get within range, after which Phil put hammer down and managed to get through into the lead blasting past down the back straight. Further down the field, positions were much as for race 1, except we lost Ian Stapleton's Alfetta GTV after 7 laps. The race finsihed with the same top three as per the first race, the order down the field being little different.

So an early championship lead to Phil Burton and Roger Donnan who both took maximum points, with Andy Thompson tucked in right behind.

I am assured that the Y10 will be available for a test session with the Lancia Motor Club this coming weekend, and then hopefully we'll be ready to join in for the next race at Castle Combe on Easter Monday..

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