Racing started late on Saturday evening with a 10 car field entered but unfortunately, Mark Bracking was unable to get parts in time and had to pull out at the last minute. We wish him the best of luck to get his car back out there soon. Cliff opened the first qualifying session with a really strong 7.80/180mph and held this as number 1 qualifier until eliminations. Mick Taylor ran a new PB of 9.12/151mph and a few others took the long way round. It’s great to see Rob Stone back out, who ran a careful shakedown pass, no dramas.
Mick Taylor ran another PB of 9.10/152mph during the second round of qualifying and there were smiles all round at the Time Bomb camp as Dave Sideway ran a well deserved 8.914/153mph. Steve Wells had a good look at the staging lights on his launch but as always, drove it like a star. Side by side burnouts from Jedd Guy and Colin Millar followed, before one of the closest and fastest races for a long time. Side by side 7 second passes, you don’t get much better than that, and to top it off Jedd ran a new PB of 7.84/1712mph. You can see it’s going to be a great season ahead with the top three cars only having 4 hundredths of a second between them: 7.80 for Cliff, 7.81 for Colin and 7.84 for Jedd... fantastic!
Up bright and early Sunday morning, the sun was coming out and there was a bit of a breeze but the track conditions were good. Out at 9:40am, 8 cars ran the third qualifier with good strong runs. Steve Wells ran a storming 8.37/158mph (PB speed) which pushed him straight into 4th position and Dave Sideway ran another fantastic time of 8.74/155mph, slowly building up the boost. Pete Rollinson took a good look at the staging lights this time but managed to stay safe.
The last qualifier was all good with strong runs and another PB for a very happy Ginner - 8.45/159mph.
After a big oil-down, the schedule had slipped a bit and we all got ready for our first elimination of the season which always brings a few butterflies - it’s great to get it out of the way! Cliff opened the session with a bye and a solid 7.99/175mph. Colin Millar completely forgot what he was doing, a bit rusty after being out the seat for a year, but managed to scrape by because Rob Stone was just as rusty and kept forgetting to take his finger off the trans-brake button!! Ginner was sharp off the line taking the win over Dave Sideway but Dave’s time is coming very soon and Jedd put in a good run, unfortunately knocking out Pete Rollinson. The big surprise of the session was Mick Taylor running well into the 8s with a 8.79/155mph after the gas was applied against Steve Wells who thought he was running Nascar and only just managed to stay in his lane.
This set up the 2nd round with Colin on a bye running a solid 7.98/169mph and Cliff and Ginner running against each other. Ginner pulled a large cherry putting an end to his weekend but it’s better to go out trying. Mick Taylor just about upset the apple-cart with another strong run and Jedd finding it hard going to get the car up the strip in a straight line but Jedd managed to pull it off.
Into the semi-finals and Jedd was on a bye run which left Colin and Cliff to fight it out, you could hear them say to each other in the fire up lane that it was just like old times. With a handshake, they both went into battle. Cliff blew the tyres away allowing Colin to progress into the final with Jedd.
We all knew this was looking to be a close race as two weeks earlier when testing, both cars ran very close numbers and again during the weekend there were only hundredths of seconds between them both. Unfortunately a small technical fault (10p fuse) went on Jedd’s car after the burnout and the race didn’t transpire which was a great pity - Colin noted that it was not the way he wanted to win but that’s racing.
And with this we closed the Big Bang after the trophy presentation and everyone went home with a smile as if this was the beginning of things to come. If you don’t come out to watch the spectacle that is the Outlaw Anglia’s, you’re missing out!
See you all soon at The Springspeed Nationals, run fast and run safe.