Round 10: The Thrilla in Maryfield
The final Round of this very enjoyable and successful Series pitched Andy and Les against each other. After nine months of racing these two had pulled clear of the pursuing pack and the winner of the Round would win the Series, so their head to head confrontation was eagerly awaited. Andy drove the pretty Morgan Aero which had won the previous four Rounds, rescuing him from an ignominious 5th place five Rounds earlier. Les had the even prettier Gulf Aston DBR9 which had led him to three Round victories since its debut in Round 2. Both cars had been through at least three hours of flat out racing with high magnetic downforce and it wasn't surprising that they both seemed a little bit weary going into the final race.
This Series ran to a total distance formula across all four lanes of the Maryfield track. By a strange twist of fate, Les and Andy did not race each other but Andy followed Les, racing the same lane, so their relative race positions could be followed to one tenth of the 80 ft track length. After they had both completed their Heats on the Red & Yellow lanes Les was 3ft ahead of Andy. Going into his Round on Blue, Les faltered early on, with a couple of offs then settled into a huge pace around 6.7secs/lap until lap 17 when another off dislodged his guide, leading to a 20sec delay on the next lap to sort it out. That left Les with a virtually impossible deficit to make up after Andy drove conservatively in his Blue lane heat to pull out 4 laps in the lead. In the end it was all for nothing anyway, because Les' s Aston began to slow early in his final Heat and nine laps later it stopped with the dreaded smell of fried motor wafting upwards. In a very anticlimactic end to this great Series, Andy reeled off his final Heat to win the evening and the Series (135.4 laps, 3 race wins, 3 fastest laps).
Other Highlights
While all this was going on, Chris quietly won all his races, setting Fastest laps twice to finish three and a bit laps down from Andy in 2nd place (131.8 laps). Alastair placed third, just 0.3 laps back from Chris (131.5) and was his usual quirky self, setting FLs in all his races, including the best of the night on the sub-optimal Blue lane (6.431), yet winning only one of his races because his occasional offs tended to be followed by strange self-imposed slow-zone interludes. Gordon was a comfortable 4th (127.9), with one race win, Evan 5th on 122.1 then it went Andy 2 (120.6), Brian (120.4), Benjamin (115.8), Trai (114.8), Les (111.6) and Gordon 2 (103.7). Mega-fast laps came from Brian (6.519) and Trai (6.636), earning them each an extra point.
Well, that's endurance racing folks - Les
WILL win a Series soon, I promise!
Andy