TRIAL REPORT


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Stroud & District Motor Club - Cotswold Clouds Trial
5th February 2006

"It's all about the restarts"

Michael Leete may have made flattering comments about the line I took in cleaning Crooked Mustard but, as everyone in Class 7 knows, doing well on the Clouds is really all about the restarts. Crooked Mustard may be the one that everyone wants to climb but it rarely has any significant affect on the overall results, and certainly not on a year when it was very dry.

Even on a 'normal' year, Stroud have to combine the restarts with a sophisticated tyre pressure strategy to balance the classes. This years hyper-dry January must have caused near panic for Clerk of the Course Gary Browning who applied tyre pressure restrictions to two additional sections after the Route Book had been printed, and to a third between signing-on and the first competitor attempting it. And the result? One from each of Classes 1, 2 and 4, two each from Classes 7 and 8, and three from Class 3, in the Overall Top Ten - that's as well-balanced as a trial gets these days and a great credit to the organising team. Even with all these last-minute changes, the tyre pressures were checked on every section with restrictions - an exemplary performance, even for Stroud.

As usual the rest of this report - which is rather more of a statistical analysis than a blow-by-blow report - has a heavy Class 7 bias, for which I make no apologies (especially as 25% of the starters were in Class 7), but you can look at the Full Results on the Stroud website to get a flavour of how the other Classes fared.

Crawley (Section 1, no restart, no tyre pressure restrictions), Axe (Section 3, and ditto), and Climperwell (Section 13, no restart, 14psi for Class 7) were cleaned by everyone in Class 7, and had no affect on the results, but all the best trials need a few sections that are included rather more for the competitor's enjoyment than for the challenge that they offer.

Crooked Mustard (Section 2, no restart, no tyre pressure restrictions) was drier than I've ever seen it, but still demanded a precise line to ensure an easy climb for all classes except 8. Wicked Juniper (Section 6, no restart, 15psi for Class 7) was not so wicked this year, hence the last-minute addition of tyre pressure restrictions. Having not competed for a couple of years, this was the first time that I'd seen it and it really was a wonderful blast up between the trees. One could almost imagine what the PreWar Juniper - which we passed very close to on the descent from the top of Wicked Juniper - must have been like.

And last, but definitely not least, of the restart-free sub-divided sections was Highwood Two (Section 11, no restart, 14psi for Class 7) where the trial was won-or-lost. So congratulations to the three Class 7 hyper-men who cleaned everything except Highwood 2 - Andrew Martin (Dutton Melos) who climbed to a 3 to win the trophy for the best Stroud member (and second overall), to Bryan Phipps (Marlin) who climbed to a 4 to win the Class, and Derek Tyler (Baja Bug) whose very average 7 on this section was enough for second in Class as he cleaned all of the sections with restarts.

So, how did the seven sections with restarts determine the remainder of the class placings? Have a good look at the pink cells of the colour-coded Class 7 Results to see which were the most difficult sections, and where each one kicked-in to affect the final results. Only the two Bull Banks sections (Sections 14 and 15, 14psi for Class 7) were anything of a lottery with half the class failing the restart on one or the other, and two drivers failing both and throwing-away the advantages they'd gained by cleaning the restarts on earlier, and more difficult, sections. Otherwise, one can almost put the class in order by which of the remaining five restarts were cleaned or failed.

Most difficult was Merve's Swerve (Section 8, 10psi for Class 7) which stopped all the class except the three hyper-men. The next most difficult was Nailsworth Ladder (Section 4, 14psi for Class 7) where the restart was in a fiendish condition and stopped all but one of those who failed two sections or more. This was followed by Highwood One (Section 10, 10psi for Class 7) which was failed by all but one of those who failed four sections or more - four restart failures being average for Class 7 this year. And finally Fred's Folly (Section 7, no tyre pressure restructions) which was cleaned by all those finishing 13th in Class and above, and Ham Mill (Section 5, 14psi for Class 7) which was cleaned by all those finishing 15th in Class and above.

So how did we do? Well, I don’t know how so many of you managed to clean the Fred's Folly restart, but we obviously did something dramatically wrong there. I then misread my crib sheet for Bull Banks 1, took completely the wrong line, and knew we didn't have a hope in hell of leaving the restart from the moment we stopped. Those two mistakes cost us 12 points and dropped us from 7th to 14th. Better luck (or judgement) next year.

Results:

Photographs:


This page published 10 February 2006
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