The Harvest Festival event at Shelsley lived up to it’s billing with beautiful blue sky and a cold nip in the air. Most importantly for Shelsley it was a perfectly dry track for the last event of the Porsche Speed Championship 2022. Thirteen Porsches made the start and were involved in some really close racing right up until the final run.
Class 1 Saw the very fast slick shod 996 GT3 that is shared by Tim Barber and David Hilton achieve some fantastic terminal speeds across the line. Tim was however able to keep ahead of David and with an adjusted best time of 32.67 seconds was the fastest Porsche with David just 1.64 seconds back. This confirmed Tim in second place overall in the championship and only 0.7 seconds off first place.
Class 2 This was an all Wadsworth affair as sadly other class competitors were not present. Early times favoured Nick who managed a personal best of 34.20 in his second practice run and led into the final run. Ian however managed to find some speed for his final run and took the win with a time of 34.29 seconds and a personal best with Nick a very close second on 34.56. This result gave Nick the overall class win.
Class 3 The biggest class with 6 competitors saw some really close racing throughout the day with the lead swapping around. Wayne Eason had the luxury of knowing that he had already clinched the overall championship title and could not quite get down to the sub 35 second mark. The first three however were within 0.65 second after the first run and Adrian Rowlands managed to dip below 35 seconds with a very fast 34.64 seconds. The first two were even closer and Andy Fagan put in a superb 34.20 seconds which had beaten Geraint Evans 34.53 until Geraint put in a very committed run that took below 34 seconds with a superb 33.86 seconds.
Class 4 This has been a season long battle between Stephen Jory and Martin Leach in two very different cars, a 3 litre 944 and a 1972 911 with a 3 litre engine. Jake Cartwright in his very pretty Boxster was the third class 4 competitor here for the first time at the rather daunting hillclimb and managed a very creditable 37.33 seconds having reduced his time by over 4 seconds. Either Martin or Stephen could have taken the class 4 title right up until the last run and after the first timed run there was only 0.42 second between them in Martin’s favour. The grunt from the rear engine 911 did however seem to have an advantage and so it was on the final run with Martin improving to a very good time of 35.08 and Stephen unable to better his first run with the margin ending at 0.75 seconds and an overall class win for Martin.
Congratulations to all competitors for a well fought championship and to Wayne Eason on winning his first overall title. The event was well attended and we were pleased to welcome Mark Hamilton who has recently stepped down as chairman of the club, but remains on the motorsport board. He talked to a number of competitors during the event to share ideas for next season. Hope to see many of you at the championship dinner on 19th November!