Qualifying was interrupted early on as Johnathan Davis took an early sortie into the gravel trap at Druids. From my point of view the restart saw me behind a gaggle of slower cars after a few laps sparing with Neil (Marshal). Unfortunately clearing the last car along Cooper Straight saw me badly positioned on the entry resulting in a ‘par de deux’ and excursion onto the grass at Surtees, not much damage but a drop in times over the last few qualifying laps probably due to dirty tyres. Simon Davey’s qualifying was hampered by a broken exhaust manifold and he qualified an uncharacteristic ninth and most of us midfielders were impressed by Neil Marshall’s position of eighth. However Neil Fowler dominated qualifying by almost a second ahead of Nigel Lingwood and a mechanically reliable Dave Lowe.

As for the race itself as expected Neil Fowler lead the start from Nigel Lingwood and Dave Lowe in third, these positions remained unchanged with Neil finishing 3 seconds ahead of Nigel with Dave close behind leading the Class A cars home. My race saw me start from fifteenth gaining a place over Dave Malpas by Paddock, however my intent to keep inside to avoid another non-finish cost me a place to Jon Nash. I spent the following lap holding off Dave whilst waiting to pick up the pieces of the battle between Jon and Colin Williams. My reservation cost me a place to Dave at Druids which I didn’t regain until two laps from the finish after a really exciting battle. Unfortunately Dave was unable to muster a further challenge as his safety cut-out worked loose on the last lap. Colin went off at Clearways on lap 3 and Jon lost out on lap 8 finishing thirteenth and twelfth respectively. I finished tenth as I passed an ‘exhausted’ Peter Denham on the final lap. Neil Marshall promoted himself to an excellent seventh place while novice Oliver Robinson finished ninth after a brilliant qualifying and race.

From Jon Nash:

 The Classic Weekend at Brands was a fantastic event, there was a real buzz in the garages, i say the garages because the FF1600 boys were lucky enough to attain individual garages, a far cry from Lydden 2 weeks earlier when i drove in the Southern FF1600 race, where the only facilities was a dodgy greasy spoon van! Anyway qualifying was a bit a disaster for me, when i saw my lap - time with 16th on the grid, i gave my half-blind 89 year old granny a call to see if she could do a better job in the race!( she said she could!) I got an ok start and started fighting with my old mate Colin Williams in car 34, as usual he was being difficult and seemed to think we were in a motor race! I made up a few places and then started having a ding dong with Ollie in car 8, i got past only to make a mistake a lap or so later and Ollie repassed me, i repassed him again, feisty bugger, only to have a moment at Clearways where i was briefly airbourne and Ollie did well not to T-BONE me, then most of the field got by, with a few laps left i tried a bit of a fight back, having got past some cars i came across car 9, Paul Hubbard, car 13 Phil Norris and Bald Colin in car 34, with 1 lap to go i went into Paddock Hill straight through the middle of the group, finally taking Colin at Druids ( apparantly he had throttle problems, i suggested next time he just pushes the pedal to the metal, otherwise my granny can drive his car aswell!), and onto finish the race in a fairly average 12th, but still buzzing from the last lap. All in all a fun - packed weekend, onto Mallory.