15 hardy souls braved the cold of January at the Rock and Heifer public house to compete in the first of six events. The tests are laid out nice and simple mainly aimed at beginners and novices but still enough to prove a challenge to the experts. To compete in the event you need to be a member of a local motor club and over 14, and able to drive! The beginner’s class is for anyone who has never completed before or hasn’t done much autotesting, the novice class is for those in the middle and the experts are the more experienced drivers.
Joe Mallinson was the first to have a run and flew round setting the quickest time by quite a margin, the rest of the field ran though without incident, some cones were clipped, which incurs a 5 second penalty, and there was a small mechanical problem but everyone was having fun. Loads of slipping round on the handbrake and plenty of wheels spin. The first test is done 6 times and scored in 3 pairs the quickest run out of the two goes towards your overall result, run 1 and run 2 for example, if you have a good time on run 2 but went the wrong way on run 1 you get to drop that time from the results which means one mistake doesn’t put you out of contention for the rest of the event.
The second test was test 1 but done backwards, the carpark has a slight incline but the second run the speeds were up a bit and nice quick blast into the first set of cone a tight right turn, on the handbrake and back to the top hard left and towards the finish. Lots of smiles all round.
Joe was still the man to beat but only got faster, going on to win the event by a comfortable margin. Second was David Robinson in a classic Mini followed by Rupert in third place only 1.36 seconds behind.
First novice was Andrew Hargreaves barely a second and a half behind the 3 placed expert, all very tight.
First beginner was a brilliant drive in the Mini by James Robinson, a 14 year old with only a few events to his name, sharing the same second as the 6th placed driver.
Chilli and jacket spuds or hot dogs and a chat in the pub afterwards, looking forward to the next one.
-Rupert North
APMCC PCA Regs for 2016-17 Series
Results:
1st – Joe Mallinson (E) 149.46
2nd – David Robinson (E) 155.68
3rd – Rupert North (E) 157.04
4th – Andrew Hargreaves (N) 158.76
5th – David Toft (E) 158.82
6th – Gary Ross (E) 167.15
7th – Mark Baker (N) 167.20
8th – James Robinson (B) 167.64
9th – Russ Coppin (E) 169.15
10th – Stephen Waddington (E) 169.65
11th – Mark Wai (B) 177.22
12th – Oliver Blair (N) 182.33
13th – Daryl Dobson (B) 183.48
14th – Amy Toft (B) 185.49
15th – John Coppin (N) 187.64
