Crashnet > Reports Index > PRI 2000 Index > Meeting 00/13

BriSCA F1 Stock Cars World Qualifier & Bumper Trophy 1300 Stock Cars Supreme Championship Qualifier 3 National Bangers VSCA Reg Pryor Memorial

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1300 Stock Cars
The second qualifying round for the Supreme Championship at Arena Essex for the 1300 Stock Cars was on May 21 in a three event meeting in what was a packed days' racing. Danny Hunn was doing quite well in the first race until Simon Welton caught him in the closing stages, Hunn too wide on turn four, allowing Welton to go inside with Derry Monk chasing, Hunn dropping back to eighth by the end having been forced to stay outside. Welton would then go on to make it a double as he won the main event, this time going inside Scott Hughes to grab the win while Monk suffered early on, finally going too late to grab any more than fifth behind Derek Mortimer. Welton even managed to grab fourth from a lap down in the helter-skelter race, Monk finishing off his day in the wall after catching the eventual winner, Andy Brown, but hit the wall in the final attack! Whoops...

BriSCA F1 Stock Cars
It was with some anticipation that Arena Essex welcomed the BriSCA F1 Stock Cars back to PRI after more than a quarter of a century's absence. The May 21 World Qualifier, organised with the help of Northampton Raceway where they had raced the previous day, joined this day by a number of dutch drivers, started with a win for Daniel Driscoll who just managed to hold Frankie Wainman Jr. off by a cars' length. The second heat followed, and was won by Rob Speak who, as a F2 driver is no stranger to the Arena Essex circuit. He managed to force his way into first place past Gary Castell three laps from home, Castell having controlled the front for much of the race after shunting Howard Davies wide on the Aveley bend. The consolation went to another former F2 visitor, Stuart Finnikin, who built a good lead to start with while Sean Tilley ran inside Derek Wass with Geoff Nicholls folowing for second and third. There was some attention paid to Darren Ahern, usually a Lightning Rod driver when he visits this circuit but had hired a car for te weekend and had managed to get a final place at Northampton the day before by qualifying in the consolation, but was unable to repeat the feat this time as John Cayzer spun him around the pit bend.

The biggest problem with the racing up to this point was that rain had slowed up all racing, but by the time the final was scheduled, the track was drying out nicely. The speeds went up and folk several miles away were reported to have heard the sound of the mighty V8's as they went to it. The final was twice stopped; first time it was when Dan Clarke experienced the Arena wall as he was fired in by Jamie Davidson. Concrete and sand-banked double armco is no joke when you thunder into it at speed, so out came the reds. This section of the race also saw Murray Harrison, defending the trophy this time, limp off while Paul Harrison was moving up well. The order restart was led off by Castell, his start perfect as he put space between himself and Rob Perry before Paul Harrison started to pile through. The second stoppage occurred when Harrison and Castell met at the bottom of the home straight, the resulting pile up as Harrison left Castell behind bringing out first waved yellows, then reds as the pile up proved too much to clear on its own. It was at that point that the race was called, which caused some consternation on both sides of the fence. [It was later found that, despite the usual ruling that any race stopped in excess of three quarters of its length is normally awarded to the leader of the last completed lap, there had been a revision of the ruling for F1 racing in that all races should be restarted, regardless of the number of laps completed. The ruling had apparently not reached the BriSCA official attending the meeting and therefore the race was called as per the normal rules. As there is no alternative, the result stands.] With some explosive protests from spectators down for the meeting, the race was awarded to Harrison, with Wainman Jr. and Peter Falding following. The Grand National qualifier went to Castell, Wainman Jr. shut out again with Harrison managing to get to sixth from a lap handicap in probably the fastest race of the day. The BriSCA F1's certainly left their mark on the track and more than one spectator expressed a wish that they would return south, preferably when the weather was a little more stable.

0  VSCA Race         6 Mo Smith        /10/4/8/5/12/2 NOCR
1  BriSCA F1 1     174 Daniel Driscoll /515/391/33/203/464/284/489/94/155
2  BriSCA F1 2     318 Rob Speak       /247/217/29/2/21/327/97/H71/495
3  Bangers 1        47 Andrew Davies   /203/597/49/331/217/401/289
4  1300 Stx wu     600 Simon Welton    /643/606/775/666/777/671/639
5  BriSCA F1 Cons  155 Stuart Finnikin /94/215/22/73/495/H21/212/236/H71
6  Bangers 2       135 Clayton Meffen  /51/33/515/72/29/420/246
7  1300 Stx Final  600 Simon Welton    /775/606/697/643/668/799/671
8  BriSCA F1 FINAL   2 Paul Harrison   /515/33/22/247/29/464/73/489/212
9  Bangers FINAL    72 Steve Macklin   /51/420/33/217/418/331/515
10 1300 Stx H/s    671 Andy Brown      /697/643/600/606/777/658/666
11 BriSCA F1 GNq   247 Gary Castell    /515/33/489/464/2/22/318/73/97
12 Bangers R2KQ     29 Andy Burrough   /250/189 LCR=29