Isle of Wight Car Club 
25 drivers including 6 ladies, one youth driver and the Gilby and Lower family who travelled from the mainland enjoyed a great day of club level motorsport on the island.
This venue being on grass is always fun and slippery to start with but slowly the grass gives way to soil and the grip and speed increases throughout the day, however, the forecast was for rain in the afternoon.
John Barrett and his class 4 all wheel drive Subaru known as Clubby was the hot favourite to win the day and he did not disappoint the pundits by dominating the timing sheets and standing on the top step of the podium. Wayne Hole who was also sharing John’s Subaru finished second, only 0.32 seconds behind and Andy Williams in his class 5 special finished 3rd.
Driver of that day must go to Shane Parry who finished 4th place overall in his class 4 Ford Puma and who impressed the onlookers with his driving skill and in particular his ability to leave the slippery start line without wheel spinning – this certainly helped him achieve the great result that he did.
As mentioned there was an amazing turn out of lady drivers at this event. Sue Mitchell’s event was almost scuppered when the throttle cable snapped during round 3 when co driver Steve Glass was driving her newly acquired automatic Renault Clio but after a quick fix, not only did Sue take the ladies’ title but finished 11th place overall.
As the afternoon progressed clouds formed and with it came the rain. The once mildly slippery venue now became an ice rink for those cars shod with standard road tyres, however, this did not dampen the spirits of the drivers who enjoyed sliding around learning and experimenting with car control techniques.
The class 3 award went to Steven Staff in his Nissan Micra who, despite using normal road tyres, finished 7th place overall. Steven and his team mate Karl Robins are already looking to upgrade to some proper rally tyres and when they do we can see them climbing even higher up the rankings.
Class 1 and 2 cars are the standard classes and because of this are only permitted to use standard road tyres. Kevin Richardson in his Suzuki Ignis Sport was awarded the class 2 win and Joel Gilby not only took the youth award but more importantly showed his dad how to drive by beating him by just under 3 seconds in their class 1 Fiat Panda. Joel I think you may have a future as a rally driver.
The next event is another unsealed surface event but this time at Knighton Sand pit – see our website for details about how you can take part.
