My First Super Sprint
and I’m now tasked with putting pen to paper!
By Tony & Sandra Seymour, pics by Gloria Wade & Vyvyan Black.
Approaching the B&B in Canning St, Warwick following Darryl Ringuet in his flash new Exige Sport 350, and sort of admiring the ‘older houses’, my wife Sandra says something along the lines of “it’s not here is it?” and we are then ushered to Area 51, sounding like some sort of quarantine area.
Well, to our surprise, we find a lovely renovated house perfectly presented, and I must say, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay, even if Darryl did have ice cold air con in his room, which I will be checking on next time. Yve, our hostess, also had the newly renovated cottage (the Love Nest) on display, which looked great and must surely be reserved for the fastest (edit by El Current Presidente: Bad luck T&S–not going to happen).
Practice on Friday was a very wet affair with only a few going out, me included, which only served to make me even more nervous… and with rain forecast all weekend.
Sandra and I got to meet everyone on Friday night and despite a lot of champagne disappearing a great meal was produced (edit: by all those lovely girls who tag along with their loving husbands/partners). My wife, amongst others, never drew breath. A pretty funny night, but we eventually got rid of non-Area 51 people around 10:30, offering Darryl a locked door and the option of staying, or not.
Saturday morning and thanks to Jason P’s “Farmer’s Almanac” the rain stayed away; only slightly calming the nerves. Watching the first group; Chernobyl (sorry typo) I mean Geoff Noble, came by rather soon but my reaction was the same. And then exiting the car looking like he’d just had a ham sandwich thru the sweeper so calmly. Myself on the other hand, was not so cool; nearly choked myself on the Hans Device, and, couldn’t stop shaking and sweating like a pig on exiting.
But to the first group Geoff, followed by Matt (with gearbox selection issues), then Jason, Darryl, Liam, Clive, John, and Rob. Some great times and happy faces with Clive getting under 1.30 (on wet tyres) and Jason into the 1.26’s. Geoff on the other hand could only manage a 1:17.3 with Maree saying it was because he didn’t have his race suit on (well, who eats a ham sandwich with a suit on?).
Then on Sunday, exiting the pits, Liam managed to smoke a cone sideways, before finally managing to find the race track–not advisable I would have thought. It did nonetheless lighten the car producing better times. Could we see a Caterham with no guards next time?
On to the second group; Mitch and I led, followed by Andrew, Ken and some MX5’s etc. Mitch was kind enough to lead, with my first lap being a PB (being my first time) and then a PB in every run after too! With Mitch R, doing the same , so I never caught him…. I now understand why Darryl calls him a “little shit” and quite frankly I must agree. Andrew also dropped his times by 3 seconds over the weekend, and, being another newbie, looked very satisfied.
We had a great dinner in town on Saturday night and a few good laughs with Sandra relating the story of how she refused to blow into the breathalyser because the officer had touched it, and bugger me, if we don’t get RBT’d Sunday morning on the way to the track. Fortunately, with the Lotus being so low the machine just appeared at waist height, and, thank God I thought.
Anyway, could I just thank everyone for a great weekend, and we are looking forward to meeting some of the others at the next round and hopefully we can have two full groups.
Cheers!
Edit: It is traditional for the (current) President to con newbies, using any excuse which comes to mind, into writing an article… Paid off too, didn’t it.
