SHEEHAN TIMES IT TO PURE PERFECTION
Using his daughter’s eventing stopwatch to time his mandatory pit visits to perfection while rivals were penalised for infringements, Brad Sheehan won both the Open Series and New Millennium races in his BMW E46 M3 to emerge top gun in the Classic Sports Car Club’s Thruxton Thriller.
First time out Sheehan took the chequer but three of the next five were reshuffled, promoting Kevin Clarke’s clutchless Intersport M3 CSL to second. Sheehan couldn’t subsequently quite match Jamie Sturges’VW Golf TCR, but Sturges – who cut a 1m20.353s (105.55mph) lap on road tyres – was docked 30 seconds on top of the 0.8s he’d stopped short and fell to third behind Michael
Vitulli (E46 M3).
Team-mates Adam Brown (Ford Fiesta ST) and John Hammersley/ Nigel Tongue (VW Scirocco R-Cup) scored in Tin Tops and Turbo Tin Tops respectively. Brown was beaten to the line by Andrew Windmill (Honda Civic Type R) who negated his Snetterton winner’s penalty and a stop-and-go, but Windmill then fell to third with a further penalty for an unsafe release. Manoj Patel (Civic) scrapped with Brown but he, too, was penalised.
The Slicks Series race was unzipped by a safety car. Sturges was quickest, but Sam Allpass’ crew radioed him in with perfect timing. Allpass’s Geoff Steel Racing BMW M4 – a tubeframe chassis with a six-litre Chevrolet V8 sting – thus beat poleman Sturges’s 350bhp Golf and Kevin Jones’ Noble M12 RSR home. Christian Pittard (Team Leos) and Tim Davis (Boss) won depleted Magnificent Sevens races.
Unreliability decimated Sunday’s Special Saloons & Modsports double-header. The opener, red-flagged after poor Tom Carey’s Honda-BDX burst into flames at Allard, was won by poleman Jack Gadd’s tube frame Escort, with 2.8-litre Millington power after challenger Clive Anderson’s brutal 5.1-litre BMW E30 twin-turbo rotated at Cobb and the chicane. Anderson kept the monster on the island later, whooshing past Gadd to reward Prism Racing’s crew with gold.
Oliver Smith (E36 M3) was close to lapping the Modern
Classics field when his steed went lame. Alex Taylor (TVR Tuscan) inherited victory after an entertaining tussle with
Matt Holben’s smallerengined version.
Stuart Daburn (Tuscan) dominated Future Classics after pacesetter Mark Chilton’s fast Nissan Skyline devoured its third engine block. Ryan Mone and Rob Hardy (Porsche 944s) completed the podium.
A jump-start penalty dropped runaway leader Jamie Keevil (Lotus Elan) to second in the big Swinging Sixties field, advantaging Ray Barrow whose Chevrolet Camaro is always a force on the airfield circuit. The rapidly conducted MGA of Jack and Steve Smith was a fine third.
When the Elans of previous winners Paul Tooms (oil fire) and Murray Shepherd/Anthony Hancock (engine) expired, septuagenarians Allen Tice and Chris Conoley netted a welldeserved Classic K victory in their Marcos-Volvo. Alex Thistlethwaite (Ford Mustang) and spectacular giant-slayer Ollie Streak (Mini Cooper S) never stinted in their pursuit.