ovaltrack

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, or so they say. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Roger Fennings who was responsible for a lot of notable goings on in the short oval scene in the late sixties and early seventies. This came about as I tracked him down when I was putting together my book, Backtrack, as I’d wanted to include a pic of the Custom Car stock car (now there’s one of the classic Stock Saloon boys to copy!). Roger looked after Spedeworth’s PR and then set up Custom Car magazine whilst working at Link House. Custom Car ran some quality coverage on short oval racing for many years and that was down to ‘the Dodger’. Not only that but they put a lot back into the sport with sponsorship of team cars and events throughout the early seventies. I don’t think the coverage that CC gave short oval racing has ever been matched by any other magazine available on the national news stands. Roger also managed one of the Auto Spedeway Superstox teams, the White City / Walthamstow Lions in 1971. What I didn’t know was all the other stuff that Roger did outside of racing – before and since. He mentioned writing an autobiography at some stage and that sounds like it will be well worth a look if and when it comes out.

I was saddened to learn of the death of Jim Davey who, by co-incidence is in one of the photos that Roger has recently loaned me. The pic was taken at Cowdenbeath in the very early seventies. It’s Jim’s very distinctive cars that I remember most of all – very low looking Superstox. I think that design/model was also raced by Bert and Alan Hawkins and later Chris Knights and one of the Olding brothers. I seem to remember one on the PRI circuits as well. Jim also raced for the Wimbledon Canaries/Dons Auto Spedeway team and his team car was the first Superstox machine raced by Dave Willis. I can recall Jim’s most prolific win being in the annual Carnival Night ‘Golden Award’. A seventies programme caption states that he was the man to beat when Spedeworth operated grass track racing at Great Chart near Ashford in Kent and at Billingshurst in Sussex and he was certainly an expert on the shale at Wimbledon.

Wasn’t it good to see Robert Collard back out in the Touring Cars after a frustrating attempt at the Porsche Carrera Cup? The televised Touring Car finale was pretty good with the big showdown between Jason Plato and Fabrizio Giovanardi providing some great entertainment. No question in my mind that these two have been leagues ahead of the others in the formula this season and unfortunately that does not say a great deal about the overall quality of the championship.

The Renault Clio Championship is always a crowd pleaser but the amount of damage has done little for the driver base this year. The season started out with oversubscribed grids which meant qualifying races and less points on offer as the timetable could only facilitate one championship status race. By the end of the season less entrants meant that there were no qualifying races but that was of little consolation to those whose championship chances had evaporated in the first couple of rounds thanks to the antics of less experienced drivers or others who should have known better. Former hot rodder Sean Brown’s team driver Stefan Hodgetts nearly won the championship but was pipped at the post. Stefan did not do all the rounds so his performance was all the more remarkable. Former Stock Rodder Steve Collison also made good progress throughout the season in the Clios.

Short Circuit backed (?) Pickup Truck racer Antony Hawkins escaped unscathed after the first roll over in the formula for over ten years. This happened at Brands hatch in the last round of the championship. Ant clipped Martin Heath’s spinning car and dug into the gravel as he went off the circuit. The last round was a cracker but we were denied a true three Truck finale as Gavin Seager effectively ruled himself out of the running after having a blown engine at the penultimate round at Pembrey. The championship came down to Steve Dance and Nic Grindrod and it was the Reading man who nabbed a win and a second place to take the title whilst Grindrod had a mediocre weekend with transmission problems. Neil Tressler’s consistent run continued and he secured the Rookie crown for this year.

Great news from Legends is that Glenn Burtenshaw won the World Championship for “Semi Professional’ drivers at Sears Point, just outside San Francisco in November. Glenn is a second generation racer – his dad Alan was a multi champion in both Bangers and Stock Rods. Glenn has himself done a little short oval racing with a couple of outings in Rookie Bangers. As I have said on this page before the Legends World Championship is very much worthy of the tag – not like some of the short oval offerings with only local drivers taking part. Well done Glenn on a remarkable achievement – it was his first visit to Sears Point and he was not even racing his own car. The thing is though, I have given Glenn a lot of stick in my commentaries over the years about him being rubbish. I might have to change my tack next season.

More congratulations are due to Peter Morton who was third in the Masters event and has won the World Legends Points Championship for the second successive season. Interesting story about Peter – he had book to hire a car from top USA racer Steve Fensler but on arrival found that the car that was awaiting him had a pink livery. “Eeee, I’m not racing int’ car wi’ that colour scheme,” says the gritty Yorkshireman and therefore another vehicle had to be sourced.

The Circuit Legends are introducing optional water cooled engines for 2008. This is an exciting development and will only apply to the 1250cc engines which have to built by one of the three approved engine builders. Extensive testing of the new water cooling kits has taken place in America and there does not appear to be any performance advantage but it is expected that rebuilds will be less frequent.

I had the privilege of co presenting the annual awards night for the British Racing and Sports Car Club recently. How good it was to see a few ex oval racers having earned honours on the circuits including Jo Polley who won the Ladies Cup in the Mighty Mini Championship. Nick Tandy won the Formula Ford Festival and is one of the six finalists for the prestigious BRDC Autosport awards. Daniel Brown collected the T-Car crown with William Buller in second. Sadly none of the top three from the SCSA championship attended the event otherwise I could have added to that list!

Oh well – I guess that’s it for 2007. Have a good Christmas. See you next season.