Beverley & District Motor Club

Well, it finally got done. Heepy’s rebuild was finished and we were on our way to his first event.

‘Tin’ Rodgers had done us proud. Gleaming paint job (and almost the colour scheme I’d suggested). The day before the event had been a bit frantic. Hooking up the pressurised brake bleeder highlighted some leaking unions. And "just fitting" the plastic rear screen had taken up most of the afternoon (I’m still looking for someone to put the beading back in for me). The weather forecast told me I wouldn’t need to fit the wipers just yet.

Sunday 18th June dawned hot and sunny. Bet you’d forgotten that day. It warranted shorts and a ‘T’ shirt. Nice short journey too. Only had to drive to Sherburn in Elmet. A mere 50 minutes brought me to the BBA Friction Proving Grounds nearby. An ex-airfield with a very busy one next door proved an unusual venue. Constant traffic of light aircraft and training helicopters kept us ducking all day. This was the new venue for Huddersfield Motor Club’s Autotest. The usual (and very hairy!) Huddersfield University one is now sadly being developed.

Lots of heads turned as me and Heepy rolled in. No-one recognised us seeing as it was the first towing job for the new Primera and Heepy’s new guise. A big BTRDA event elsewhere had reduced the entry to a mere 26, unusual for a Larkspeed event. We managed to draw a small crowd to survey the new ‘wheels.’ The most impressed was Shorty. He kept gazing at it all day and muttering "I’m impressed". Time for a respray Dave?

Scrutineering and signing on made the senses aware of the nearby sewage farm, unfortunately downwind on what was to prove a very hot day. My randomly chosen place in the paddock proved to be just right in avoiding the smell, a real boon at lunchtime!

There were three test sites, two very close to the paddock and documentation, but the third was about threequarters of a mile away! Some silly bugger actually walked there during the day! The organisers were at odds trying to keep competitors off a pristine raised section of the runway which was used for testing HGV’s brakes. First offence was a warning, the second would be exclusion. They were serious! The tests were big. Much use of second gear would be the order of the day. Driving down to the third site in second was to prove very tiring for the engine throughout the day with serious consequences.

Time to stop buggering about and get on with some driving. Guess who was first car? Yep, everyone gathered round to see how the new Heepy would shape up. Not particularly well actually. A ‘shuffle’ for one of the reverse gates cost me about 4 seconds to an on form Shorty who nailed quickest time on that test. Mine was no better than 7th fastest and didn’t get much better on the three runs we had.

On test two it was John Taylor’s turn to be quickest. These two were like the McLaren BMW Team, couldn’t make up their minds who was going to be top dog! The proof of the pudding however was the third test. It was awesome! A very long, spread-out test, it required being flat-out in second (or third if you had one!) at something approaching 45 MPH, during which a flick into reverse was needed across a line followed by another change back to forward and then some gates. Tif Needell eat your heart out! It was brilliant. Unfortunately our two NHMC hero’s admitted to not liking this type of test. John spoilt his first run with a 10 second penalty whilst Shorty was a full 5 seconds adrift. No-one came closer than about three seconds to me on the three runs we did. My first attempt was confused by a stopwatch that wouldn’t start. A second run being requested by the marshal. There was a worrying moment when I thought I’d incurred a line penalty during the re-run (Sod’s Law!), but at the finish all was clean.

There were three runs at each test. My nearest rival, Ian Bovill in his 2CV Special managed to pick up 20 seconds in penalties on test 4 while NHMC’s Richard Wood collected the same before lunch on what looked like a promising day. Rob White in Class B was having a ding-dong battle with Ilkley’s Henry Kitching ‘til he too incurred a penalty on test 6. Graham Hepworth who beat me on the last Larkspeed round was there, but the car he’d been sharing was also on the alternative BTRDA event, so Dave Mosey had lent him a 998cc Mini for the day. He was headed for trouble!

I never did get to grips with the first test. Two ‘shuffles’ for gates on the first 2 runs and a mediocre third run rather flattened my overall time. After 9 tests we stopped for a welcome lunch-break. I’d taken 3 bottles of water in anticipation of the hot weather and was already halfway through the second one. In deference to my other hobby of winemaking, the most prolific bottles in our house are green with narrow necks. Caused a few heads to turn whenever I had a swig from one! The sewage farm was also making itself known thanks to a gentle breeze. The extreme temperature made it hard going for the engines. The long 3/4 mile drag in second gear down to the third test began to tell. Already the oil pressure had dropped to 9psi at tickover and only struggled to 30psi at full throttle. That new oil pump we put in during the rebuild looked like a really bad waste of time. Also there seemed to be a problem with the clutch. Apart from pulling away from a standing start, it usually needs to be dumped without much ceremony, but it actually seemed to let itself out quite slowly even with my foot right off the pedal. Not much I could do on the day the thing just felt like ‘wet mince!’

After 9 tests I was on a total of 408 seconds with Henry Kitching’s MG Metro a further 13 seconds behind followed by John Taylor nudging ahead of Shorty by about 5 seconds. Graham Hepworth had been putting in some good times despite the small engine. However, the loss of first gear put him and his sharing buddy Nigel Sykes well out of contention. To be fair they were game enough to carry on, but then the clutch began to complain and required copious amounts of Coke to get them to the end - which, to their credit, they did.

A new set of tests were set up for the afternoon. These were duly walked and memorised. Huddersfield, along with most other organisers, used the same configuration of cones and just arranged different tests around them. This causes the most confusion for the competitors with remnants of the mornings tests still hanging around in the grey cells (what grey cells?). The now infamous third test site wasn’t quite as awesome as earlier, but it did have a much higher speed for the finish, which was a bit loose. It seemed to be getting hotter and a quick check of the dashboard gauge in the Primera confirmed a surprisingly high air temperature of 34° Celsius! Don’t know what the track temperature was. Over to you Murray!

The second test of the afternoon saw my only discretion of the day with a line penalty for only getting one wheel across. Doh! Shorty was there again to pick up the honours, but still 3.5 seconds off Ian Bovill’s special, attempting to recover the day. He put in some stunning times for the first two tests. Henry Kitching blotted his copy book with a penalty on the first test of the afternoon and put himself out of the running. At this point someone told me it was between Ian and me for overall honours. Another swig from one of my ‘special’ bottles and I decided to push for it. Out of the last 9 tests I managed 8 quickest times in my class which was enough to keep me in front of Ian. He was having his own class battle with Paul Davenport and Ian Roberts in their 1293cc Mini Estate. It’s very quick, but they did incur a lot of penalties between them.

So after 18 tests the all new Heepy rewarded me with a win first time out and a bunch of Larkspeed Championship points for the club. Ian Bovill carried off 2nd overall and first in Class D 38 seconds behind. John Taylor settled the squabble between him and Shorty, a further 15 seconds down to take the Class A win. Rob White kept his penalties down to just the one to grab the Class B honours from Henry Kitching by a very slender 0.8 seconds! Chris Leeming from SEOC provided us all with some very entertaining driving, as usual, to nail the Class C award. A quick speech then belt home just in time to catch the start of the Canadian GP. Life don’t get much better!