[John Turner]

35 starters; 29 Finishers.

The race was over 15 minutes (11 laps), the TTRS cars joined by the quickest of the PBMW cars, which made for a large grid. It was an all Mazda RX7 front row - Stacy Vickers on pole with Tony Ellis alongside. Interestingly though they are in different classes as the Vickers car has the 12A engine and Ellis the larger 13B engine ((I think I have that right). I was intrigued by the commentators way of advising how to differentiate between the two; apparently Vickers car is red, which must have confused every one further, since like Ellis's car it's actually orange! There are however, other ways of telling them apart as we shall see.

Anyway, Vickers, not for the first time, nor the last, struggled to get away from the line although on this occasion blaming it on the spooling up of rotary engine might be a bit tenuous as Ellis who grabbed the lead was similarly powered! The rest I'll cover in pics.

The first one shows Ellis leading through the Esses on the first lap followed by Wayne Howlett (85 - BMW E36 M3), Andrew Busby (33 - E30 M3) and Roger Kneebone (10 - E34 M5). Next up we have Don Hughes Golf GTi which went on to finish 7th, and then Andy Hanes GTi (170) which failed to finish. Pic 4 shows a pair of the PBMW cars, the E30s of Nigel Olive-Jones (3 - 15th) and Alan Stuart (11 - 17th). Pic 5 shows Andrew Busby's E30 M3 which finished 4th. Finally for this set, we have the rare sight of 2 E34 M5s of Roger Kneebone (10) and Julian Newman (70). They shared mixed fortunes; the Kneebone car had its dramas in practice but finished the race 5th, whereas the Newman car retired after 7 laps. On their outside is the Rover Tomcat (18) of Graham Meeks who finished 8th.

I'll continue this in my next post.