The opening round of the championship took place at Pikes Peak last month and it was Richard Kershaw who took a commanding win in his Milner R5 ahead of Ian Rochelle. Rochelle’s car suffered several problems over both days of the event causing him to be down on his usual pace.
Dean Sutcliffe and his team have been hard at work fixing vehicles since round one. Not only did Sutcliffe’s racer retire from the event with a broken shaft, his service truck broke down two-thirds of the way into the long trek from Norfolk to Myherin which meant he had to be recovered home before starting the journey again, eventually arriving at the venue at around 5am.
“We’d got to within 100 miles of the venue when the truck broke, we had no option but to get recovered all the way home and start the journey again,” said Sutcliffle. “Both the racer and the truck have now been fixed and hopefully we will have less drama at round two.”
Kevin Groos faces a last minute rush to be ready for next weekend’s event. The transfer box on Groos’ car failed and is presently undergoing a full rebuild but he is hopeful of making it to the start line.
“We made a last-minute decision to fit a 5.3V8 engine in the car before round one and I was very pleased with how it performed,” commented Groos. “Sadly the transfer box broke and forced us out early on day two. We’re working flat out to get ready for round two.”
Paul Myers and the Britpart team have been busy making several modifications to their Land Rover ahead of round two including brake bias adjustments and changes to the ECU of the car’s 4.8V8 engine to improve low down pick up.
A broken propshaft caused the retirement of Paul Harris on the round one while he was leading the Trophy category. Harris has made up a new shaft ahead of what he hopes will be a successful round two.
In the Freelander Challenge round two will be the last time Nick Lines has Keith Tween navigating for a while as Tween is off to Afghanistan as part of his Territorial Army duties. Lines hopes to have a new navigator for the rest of the season.
Event HQ for round two will be at Dixies which is accessible from the A40 at Llywel (between Llandovery and Sennybridge). Action will start at 10am on Saturday with a full day of competition, day two will commence at 9am with the event expected to finish mid-afternoon.
