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BTRDA® Gold Star® Champions

Autotest championship at mid season

Added: 29th June 2009

The two previous MSA and BTRDA champions battled for overall honours on the Hartlepool & DMC Autotest until fate intervened. Immediately after lunch Paul Swift and Alastair Moffatt both had drive shaft failures on their Mini Specials and while Paul made it to the end of the test with the loss of a few seconds, Alastair had to take a maximum time. This was the difference at the end with Paul taking FTD as they shared fastest times all day. While the special drivers helped each other to repair their cars, Richard Pinkney continued with an excellent run to finish second for the sixth time this year. Steve Morten was in a good position to benefit from Alastair's misfortune but his progress was halted when his clutch failed. This let Duncan Wild through to take maximum Jubilee class points and sixth overall. The remaining top honours went to Simon Echlin in fourth and Henry Moorhouse fifth. Henry is a fast driver who is improving his accuracy with each event and collecting less penalties. Lee Valentine was the star driver on home soil, taking the saloon class from an off form John Moffatt. John leads the class at the mid season split but Lee has shown that he will be a strong challenger to John in the second half of the season.

Howard Everingham crept into the top ten with victory in the Mini Class. The well supported sports car class provided some close battles in the morning. Richard and Simon opened up a class lead while the remainder were very close and only the odd penalty separated these drivers. In the end the demise of Stephen and Ben Morten let Keith Walton take third in class. The Specials class was very well supported with 13 entries. Mike Sones had problems on the first two tests; first he had to borrow some new plugs from Alastair Moffatt to cure a misfire only to have a drive shaft fail on the next test. The remainder of the day showed that he has lost none of his skill when the car behaves.

At the mid season split it is Alastair Moffatt who leads the Gold Star Championship but only by one point from Richard Pinkney. Duncan Wild is in third place, ahead of Stephen Morten. Stephen Wild, who shares the ABS with his dad, is fifth but has only tackled four events. He should give the leaders a run for their money in the second half of the season.


Results
1 Paul Swift (Mini Special) 634.1; 2 Richard Pinkney (Caterham 7) 643.7; 3 Alastair Moffatt (Mini Special) 654.0; 4 Simon Echlin (Caterham 7) 669.8; 5 Henry Moorhouse (AEA Mini Special) 686.5; 6 Duncan Wild (ABS Freestyle) 689.2; 7 Lee Valentine (Nova) 690.2; 8 Keith Walton (Locost) 707.9; 9 Mike Sones (Mini Special) 710.3; 10 Howard Everingham (Mini) 718.3.
Class Winners: Everingham; Valentine; Pinkney; Swift; Dave Cook (Ford RS100E) 785.9.

Duncan Wild

The full event results are in the file below.  Latest BTRDA points are in the files below for points at the half season split.  The maximum points scores can be either 3/5, 4/4 or 5/3 for each half so there is still plenty of events left for the championships before the championships are decided.

Peter Cox