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This brings us to round 12 of the championship, held at Mallory Park on what most will remember as a rather hot day. This meeting attracted an entry of 20, which is about what we expected as it was the week before the Cadwell weekend. As it turned out, 19 turned up on the day as Nigel Lawrence was unable to make it due to illness. This time the first race was 5 on the programme and started at 11.54. When it got underway the first four places were soon occupied by Glynn Williams, Clive Wadey, Karl Scott and Cass. They finished in that order and Cass was followed home by Tony Smith. Adrian Saunders had managed to get past Tony but had to pull out on the last lap when the right exhaust sheered at the barrel flange causing the front to drop onto the ground half way round Gerrards. He was only able to keep it off the floor by keeping his right foot on the back of the exhaust. Michael Hand actually finished behind Tony and he was followed closely by Richard Insall. Behind him it was Simon Briggs still on Karl's spare XJ. Simon was in turn ahead of the two other XJ550s of Keith Chambers and Andy Charlesworth, they were followed by Mark Daniels. There was less than 0.75 sec between those three and Alec Gilfillan wasn't too far behind either on his GPZ550. Mostyn Bullock was the next to finish. He was lucky to even be at the meeting after a bit of a moment on a practice day on Wednesday. He had reversed the gearchange on his GSI000 and it dropped into neutral as he changed down one on the entrance to Gerards. I'm not saying he forgot which way the change now went, we all know what its like when things go wrong but he and machine ended up having a very high speed trip into the gravel trap. This resulted in extensive but luckily relatively minor damage to them both. On Sunday Mostyn stated he felt a lot worse than the bike looked. John Correia followed Mostyn, his X7 was not at all well, having holed a piston in practice. The X7 of Chris Spooner was next this was also playing up as it had blown both base gaskets in Practice. After they were replaced, something still wasn't right. Following Chris was the Laverda 750 of Mike Annesley who eventually managed to get clear of Phil Underwood, whose GT500 seemed to slow slightly during the race. The second race took place at 2.41 quite a change as we usually seem to be one of the last ones run. The result was a repeat of the first race in the first three places. However in fourth place it was Tony Smith who somehow kept his GPz750 in front of the RD400s of Cass and Adrian Sanders. Tony was pushing so hard that his GPz looked to be out of shape for most of the race. Adrian got Past Cass in the closing stages of the race but despite his best efforts, couldn't get by Tony. Mostyn was the next finisher taking 15 seconds off his earlier race tine. He had no doubt, by now made certain he was sure he could remember which way the gearchange went. Mostyn was the first of four finishing within 1.9 seconds. Behind him were Michael Hand, Simon Briggs and Mark Daniels. Then it was a group of three covered by 0.72 second with Keith Chambers getting the better of Richard Insall and Andy Charlesworth. Alec Gilfillan was the next finisher ahead of Mike Annesley. John Correia was the last finisher with an X7 that really didn't want to be out there. Chris Spooner failed to get out as his X7 just refused to fire up. This is believed to be a due to a duff CDI unit. Phil Underwood failed to finish when his GT500 suffered a misfire that refused to clear. This is thought to be due to a plug breaking down. This would normally be called bad luck but Phil hasn't put new plugs in his GT since he started racing it in 1999. Phil has still managed to retain his lead in the EMRA championship as this was his first DNF. If it loses him the championship, I'm told he will have to write out "I must change my spark plugs at least once a year" until the start of next season. Only one person fell off and this was Michael Hand. Now you might think this strange as he finished both races but Michael's accident occurred on the Saturday night when he fell off the swings in the kids play area. From what I'm told he was trying to prove something at the time but ended up proving what Betty had suspected for a long time. Steve Bailey. |