A Record-Breaking Club

Nick Sismey knew he didn’t have a fast enough car in qualifying to make the ‘A’ so borrowed his sons, Jamie Sismey, beating him by just 0.03 seconds to take 7^th on the grid. This he converted into 2^nd behind Allan at the flag to retake the lead in the Championship. Martin Chadwick maintained his 3^rd place grid slot all the way to the end of the ‘A’, losing two laps per lane to Nick, while Jonathon Levers improved on his best ever finish, by 2 places, with 4^th leaving him 5^th in the Championship!

John Chell took his first ever Individual Qualifying Round (IQR) win on Blue lane to take a career best 5^th in Qualifying (a 3-place improvement) which he maintained all the way through the ‘A’ Final. There is one thing having a blindingly quick car, there is another controlling it, which John certainly did here! With 4^th Fastest Lap on the night that was also a 6-place career improvement. Alan Bullock raced for 64 minutes on Tuesday night, notching up 725.1 laps (10.5 miles) through winning the ‘B’, with the 2^nd most Final laps of the night (5^th ever), and taking 6^th in the ‘A’.

Rob Crossland took two scalps in the ‘A’ Final, after qualifying a career equalling 9^th, to record his best ever finish (by 1 place) of 7^th, while Cliff Roythorne dropped 2 grid places with 8^th. His car was quick though, recording the 5^th Fastest Lap of the night. Pole man Lee Pateman (our 4^th different one in 2010) had another Oval nightmare with several shouts of “What?” as he was repeatedly taken out, leaving him 9^th, while reigning Champion Jamie Sismey decided to leave after 4 ‘A’ Final races as it was getting late and University work had to take priority.

Kevin Lye celebrated his 20^th Club Night with 11^th, or 2^nd in the ‘B’. He had given Alan a good run for his money but couldn’t quite stay with his consistency. Geoff Peach was some 70 laps behind Kev but nearly 10 laps up on Tom Chadwick to take 12^th, while Shloke Anand had been in the fight early in the Final but faded away to 14^th overall.  Paul Levers also struggled with the Oval concept, he was however extremely tired having not got to bed until 3am, but he did do enough to beat his chief rival Richard James so he had something to smile about in his sleep!

Peter Barber had returned after a 2 meeting sabbatical to win the ‘C’ Final, but just didn’t have enough in him to go for the ‘B’ Final win as well, dropping to 17^th overall ahead of Simon Sumner who was celebrating a an 11-place Fastest Lap improvement of 8^th.  This was Simon’s first meeting with his own cars, so watch out for the rest of the season!

Martin Allsopp, in his 80^th straight Club Night missed out on the ‘A’ Final by just 0.12 seconds, his 5^th tenth grid slot in a row, but then tumbled all the way down to 19^th overall, Ovals really not his thing! Paul Mellor was just 20 laps down on Peter in the ‘C’, I think he realised he would have to stay another hour if he had won! Liam Smith was only another 3 laps further back after 30 minutes of racing with returnee Club Member Andy Holliday talking his way to 22^nd overall! Phil Rees admits “He just loves Ovals!” and it showed with 23^rd place, his worst finish in 16 years! Roy Masters had been stuck on the M1 so missed practice and qualifying so languished down in 24^th (with the 7^th quickest car mind!) while Josh Roythorne never really got it together becoming our 4^th Wooden Spoon winner in as many meetings.