KEMP AND HOLLYMAN STAY CLEAN TO SCORE
The Aston Martin Owners’ Club, the organiser of the first ever event at the Norfolk venue 65 years ago, hosted its fourth meeting of the season in East Anglia with a delightful array of exotic historic and modern race vehicles.
Errors decided the outcome of the joint GT Challenge and Intermarque Championship race to the delight of Christopher Kemp and Robert Hollyman respectively.
Kemp’s chances of victory looked slim with an extra 30-second success pit stop penalty, especially when Richard Taffinder – having been forced down to fourth place by Kemp and the Mike Brown/paul Cripps Aston Martin during the opening two corners – looked serene in the lead. Even after the pit stops had worked their way through, Taffinder in his Lotus was well in command when officials ordered a drivethrough penalty as his stop was deemed one second too short. He rejoined the track just behind Kemp’s Aston Martin. The fired-up Lotus racer piled the pressure on for the final four laps but Kemp kept cool to run out the victor.
In the Intermarque race the returning Robert Hollyman powered past James Hilliard in the Porsche 968 and kept James Guess behind too after he had taken over from Hilliard. In the final stages Guess found a way past but mistakenly slowed thinking he had seen a red flag allowing the Hollyman Porsche 964 back in front and was unable to dislodge him for a second time. “I worked out early on I needed to pull away on the straights and keep them behind in the corners,” admitted Hollyman.
Rod Begbie’s first Equipe GTS race of the season yielded a comfortable victory as he roared his TVR Grantura from pole to leave the rest to squabble for the minor places. Rob Cull initially held second but John Andon displaced him on the sixth lap with Pete Foster, the last of the leading runners to take his pitstop, jumping Cull. Cull then pitted for his crew to check the exhaust mounting, rejoining to hold onto his fourth place – just. His cause was helped by Nick Matthews spinning at Hamilton trying to unseat his throaty sounding TVR.
Fast-starting Clive Morley was quickly demoted from the lead of the Pre-war Sports Cars/st John Horsfall/bentley combined event by David Freeman. Poleman Michael Haig inherited the position when Freeman took to the grass at Riches on the second lap and then controlled events with his low-line modified Bentley. Freeman kept second from the closing Morley until he retired leaving Peter Dubsky to claim the final podium place.
The concurrent 50s Sports Cars/innes Ireland Cup was also settled by an error this time by the leading Ford Falcon pilot Jonathan Smare who inadvertently switched off the engine. “The car is new to me,” explained the embarrassed former leader. This promoted Jeremy Cooke (Shelby GT350) who quickly handed over to Mike Dowd to drift his way to victory. Local racer John Burton led the early laps of the 50s Sports Cars before being passed by Andrew Keith-lucas, who completed his pitstop quicker.
Mike Brown took in the Allcomers race to get in some practice before the upcoming British GT event and used the power of the GT3 Aston Martin to lap the field. A late misfire for Robin Marriott allowed the similar GT4 Vantage of Paul Cripps/ Matthew Manderson to steal second on the penultimate lap.