WINSFORJORDANS JUNIORANDSENIOR
MALLORY PARK: BRSCC BY IAN SOWMAN
Mike Jordan repelled a spirited Julian Crossley to win the HRDC Allstars race at Mallory Park. The gap between Jordan, in the victorious Austin A40, and Crossley, in his Morris Mini Cooper S, was never more than 0.8s throughout the 31-lap distance.
Thomas Grindall got his MG W&P GT into the lead at the first corner, but Jordan grabbed the initiative on the exit of Gerard’s with Crossley, who started third, following through into second. Thereafter the two cars circulated as if on a short piece of elastic, with Jordan fending off Crossley’s late attempts at the hairpin.
Grindall was a distant third, while Matthew Moore (Austin Healey Jamaican) had to come back from a poor start, and was lucky to avoid sanction for passing under yellows. John Moon – on his first visit to Mallory since navigating it anticlockwise in his Eurocar days – claimed fifth despite losing his coolant in qualifying and his brakes mid-race. Tony Shirtcliffe was the best A35 Academy contender.
Take That singer Howard Donald lined up on pole for the Coys Trophy, but everything changed for him at the start when he got enormous wheelspin and dropped to ninth. That setback gave him the chance to shine, however, as he picked off cars with great conviction over the following six laps to make it a Lotus Cortina 1-2 behind Alistair Dyson. The gap was 10 seconds, but a series of consistent laps before the pitstops meant that Donald’s teammate, Andrew Jordan, took over in the lead. Marc Gordon capitalised on misfortune for others and took third in his Jaguar XK150.
The Alfa Romeo title will be decided at Donington after points leader Andrew Bourke walked away emptyhanded, allowing reigning champion Tom Hill to narrow the gap. Bourke had been disputing third in the Twin Spark class with his Bianco team-mate Michael Tydeman, who put him heavily into the barriers on the climb to Shaw’s, ruling him out for the day. Hill could only manage a second and third – the latter after Tydeman – excluded for his earlier misdemeanour – relegated him at Devil’s Elbow on the penultimate lap. Dave Messenger produced some brilliant defensive driving to take two wins in the 156-dominated class, while overall Graham Seager – later sidelined by a faulty supercharger pulley on his 147 – and Alastair Kellett (156) took the honours.
Were a championship awarded for the MR2 Classics, Arron Pullan would surely have secured it as he notched up his eighth and ninth wins in the finale. His curiously beige-hued Mk1 beat Adam Lockwood, who won the other three, by a slender margin. But in race two there was a more convincing winner, partly because Lockwood had been drawn into an early battle with Dave Hemingway. Paul Rice and Jason Jesse split the wins in the concurrent 206 GTI Cup.
The Track Attack Race Club produced two excellent races, both won by Multimarque entrant Simon Ward (Vauxhall Astra). Nippon Challenge racer Kevin Middleton was a threat in the first race before a misfire and brake issues, whereupon the Tricolore contingent, headed by Tony Hunter’s Clio, took up the cudgels.
In race two, the first seven cars were split by less than four seconds until Nick Gwinnett turned fellow Clio man Robert Buckland around at the hairpin. Andrew Mitchell was one of those behind to benefit from that, and his Peugeot 205 GTI beat Hunter in the sprint away to the flag to be the Tricolore victor.