Porsche Club Speed Championship – Castle Combe 26th June 2010

The seventh round of the Porsche Club Speed Championship ran at a very warm and sunny Castle Combe circuit last weekend. Despite the sultry weather, there was intense competition on the circuit and friendly rivalry across all classes at this popular sprint.

Six drivers entered Class P4 at Castle Combe with Justin Mather and Donald Peach putting in a heroic effort until two o’clock in the morning to carry out engine repairs on their shared 924. Despite their hard work the car was still not performing so they had to drop out of the final run and trophy contention. Stuart Maclean and his 924 did perform brilliantly however and he used his long championship experience to take home third place trophy after a fastest time of 81.48 seconds. Jonathan Thompson also had a good day at Combe (2.5 litre 944) with a series of regular and consistently improving times over the day. Jonathan completed the day with a fastest time of 80.34 seconds for second place. Consistent performance and experience have long been the hallmark of Graham Rose’s (924S) appearances and Saturday was no exception. Graham emphatically won with a wide margin of 4.51 seconds and a fastest time of 75.83 seconds.

Five drivers entered Class P3 with David Chivers (911E) continuing his good form from Gurston last week for third place in 75.20 seconds. Ian Wadsworth (911 3.0 litre) cut his times down systematically to finish with over half a second advantage over David with a fastest time of 74.65 seconds for second place. In the context of P3 Tim Barber (911SC) created a relatively large margin of 1.95 seconds for first place after a very impressive time of 72.70 seconds, just a fraction of a second away from the 72.15 second class record for P3 at Castle Combe.

Jeff Archer’s (911 3.2) second appearance this season in Class P2 netted him third place trophy after a fine last run with a fastest time of 72.56 seconds. It was a remarkably close run competition between first and second with Ben and Geraint Evans (911 3.2) battling over the day for the smallest of margins in their shared car. It went down to the final run with just 0.17 seconds between them. Ben took second place in 71.57 seconds while Geraint honed his times down to a superb 71.40 seconds for the class win.

Four drivers entered Class P1 with Simon Wilson and his supercharged 924S performing well as he cut his times down to 72.44 seconds (including 2% penalty for running slicks) for third place. Karl Lupton (supercharged 944) created large successive improvements to his times over the day by cutting away a full ten seconds from his first practice to his final, fastest time of 71.73 seconds and second place trophy. In his first competitive outing with the Speed Championship Mel Spear (964 Cup) put in an impressive series of runs right from the first practice. His fastest run not only earned him first place trophy in 71.36 seconds it also meant he was fastest Porsche on the day.