26 of us made it out to qualify and as usual, it was very tight with only a couple of seconds separating 6^th position from 17^th. Mac McKillop walked Class B pole with a fantastic 50.086, nearly half a second quicker than Dave Penlington with a very respectable 50.541. Dave Lowe took the lead in Class A with 51.067 giving him an overall grid position of 6^th. Unfortunately Robert Boyer, spun at the exit of Gerrards and ended up in the tyre barrier. It certainly looked rather dramatic and a lack of replacement parts stopped him from racing on the day, rumours were that Ken Thorogood will end up fixing it for him. Also worth mentioning is Jon Nash in 5^th just sneaking in under 51 secs and Rick Mowser with an excellent 52.589 at, I think, only his third race. Colin Williams would probably prefer not to be mentioned with a very out of character 54.056, still it gave Bernard something to take the mickey out of him with!

The race start was all very clean, I mucked up my revs and bogged down the engine, thus losing a couple of places by the first corner, the rest of the race was fantastically busy, it seemed that every lap had someone to tussle with. The first part of my race was spent swapping places with Dave Malpas and Steve Bradley, with the hairpin being a choice overtaking place for us, my nosecone is now Avon Black on one side thanks to Dave Malpas! Towards the end, Richard Shelton over took me seemingly from nowhere and we had another couple of laps trying to correct that but to no avail! At the end the stewards decided to hide the chequered flag which left some drivers on there slowing done lap, but several others, myself and Richard included, still racing for another lap. Could have been a bit dangerous, but luckily wasn’t. Also means that I couldn’t say that if I had I one more lap I would have overtaken him!

At the front was another well deserved win for Paul Walton, Simon Davey took a close 2^nd and a chuffed Anthony Wills in 3^rd. Dave Lowe won Class A (again!) with Steve Collyer pleased with 2^nd, then Peter Denham in 3^rd. Mac McKillop, ended up retiring on lap 9 and Jon Nash was last seen holding his head in the paddock after managing to switch off his ignition at the hairpin on the last lap and ended up going from (I think) 4^th to a finish of 9^th. I’m sure Bernard will also give his opinion on that in the caring style that he uses with his clients!

Overall it was a great race, and I can’t wait for the next 6 weeks to go before the next race, then it starts to get busy with races nearly every other weekend until the Festival at Brands.