[CMOTD]

Round 7 Conington Park
The round was run yesterday with co-host Tel sharing driving duties and a bacon roll or two. As usual I drove the classes in which he has an entry to avoid any hint of favouritism so class A and D were my domain with Tel doing B and C. The shakedown had not flagged any major mechanical problems although the racing did produce a couple but more of that later.

Each car was given a 25 lap run with the aim of quickish, steady, consistent laps rather than an outright attempt at fast times which could have resulted in too many offs and possible damage. My track is not too technical and tends to reward acceleration and straight line speed, but the twisty bits are not as simple as they may look so handling is still a factor.

Class A - Modern Endurance 24 hours
This ran to previous form with Tel's BMW leaving the rest to eat his dust and the Mercs of Team Tatters and Roadrunners scrapping over the other podium places. In a previous round somebody mentioned that the class B Aston of Roadrunners had a smelly motor - it has afflicted their Merc in this class now! Either they are both about to let the smoke out or Graham has just got a pair of stinky ones!

Full results and podium:

   

   

Class B - Classic Le Mans
Bit of a shake up in the usual order here. Roadrunners Aston developed a touch of the dreaded Ninco hop and tumbled down the order to 5th place, the motor still pongs as well! Mountain View's GTO was again the class of the field but Bangers Racing's Cobra was not far behind with BARacer's GTO a little adrift in 3rd place.

Full results and podium:

   

   

Class C - Classic Daytona
We had a couple of problems in this class.
Green Star's De Tomaso expired on the 14th lap. There was nothing outwardly wrong with it but it ground to a halt and refused to fire up again. It would have needed a full strip down to diagnose the fault so a DNF was recorded.
Oaktree Racer's Porsche 914 suffered gear failure during its warm up laps, probably a loose pinion, but again a full strip down needed so it recorded a DNS. Tel will attempt to repair both cars before the next round.

There was also a shake up at the top of the table with Team Tatters' BMW only managing  6th place. It handled well but seemed woefully short on acceleration. Courtney's Camaro finished on top of the podium, just shading ALS Racing's Lancia with the similar car of Bangers Racing a bit adrift in third place.

Full results and podium:

   

   

Class D - Inter Series
There are some seriously quick cars in this class with 4 of them turning in very impressive sub 5 second laps. Courtney's Porsche 917 was an absolute rocket ship and probably the fastest car I have ever run on this track. It had nearly 6 seconds lead over the 2nd placed Alfa of Mountain view with a record shattering 4.6sec fastest lap. Brumos' McLaren was close behind the Alfa in 3rd place, Tel's Ferrari missed out on the podium by just a couple of 10ths and Ruscillo Racing's GT40 was less than a second behind him in 5th so the top half of the table was incredibly close.

Full results and podium:

   

   

The cars are now at Roughwood for the final round which will be run on Saturday so we get the bonus of being able to  play with these lovely cars twice. Tel's track is radically different to mine with a tricky set of S bends and a couple of nasty hairpins so it will be interesting to see if the pecking order is upset on this more technical track.

My thanks to Graham and all the entrants for providing a fun day playing with other people's cars.