Steve: FTD & New Course Record – 52.40s YouTube Video

Matt: 1st in Class – 52.83s

Carole: 2nd in Class – 60.18s

Zoe: 4th in Class – 64.57s New Personal Best YouTube Video

Steve’s Report: Nice to get out in a racecar for the first time this year, last time I even sat in our Dallara was at Anglesey last October. The car felt easy to drive straight away with all the changes we had done over the winter. Fortunately everything that had been changed was definitely a step forwards, the new barge board design thanks to John Hughes seemed to work perfectly. John also advised us to remove all the gurneys for Castle Combe and the car was showing good top speed at every part of the circuit. The geometry changes Darren Warwick had given to us made a significant difference to the feel of the car. The car still had initially some turn in oversteer, which always makes me feel uncomfortable and power oversteer on exit, which Matt hates. However, we slowly adjusted the rear ride height and can honestly say the car got better throughout the day. Matt pipped me on the 1st timed run to my horror and broke my course record by nearly 0.7s. I beat him on the 2nd timed run by just under 0.1s. Matt had a problem on the 3rd timed run, which meant it was all down to the 4th and final run of the day. I managed to get a nice run in to lower the course record by just over 1.1s to 52.40s and win FTD.

It was great to see friends at the meeting and Steve Miles did a brilliant job in his 2.0L Duratec (307bhp) Van Diemen, he was also inside last year course record and was driving brilliantly, hopefully Alan Mugglestone doesn’t give him too much more training!

My thanks to John Hughes for designing the aero package, John Hansell at Fibre Lyte for manufacturing all the aero components, Alan Mugglestone for the set up of the car and driver tuition we have had in the past. All of these people have helped make the car and us go quicker.

In lieu of not being able to give a FTD speech at the event, thank you to Bristol Motor Club, all the marshals, officials and competitors for making run smoothly as it always does at the Dick Mayo Sprint.

Zoe’s Report: Castlecombe…Dick Mayo Sprint…first event of the season! 4 months later than we’d originally hoped the season would start so everyone was in good spirits to finally be back out on track!

We’d all anticipated hot, sunny weather so when we got there to it trying to rain; we immediately got the wets out and at the right pressure because, as all racers know, if you get them ready for use they won’t be needed.

Practice lap went well, started with a 70.43s! Dropped my time down to a 64.73s on my first timed run – 1 second lower than my time for the same event last year!

During the day, the sun started to peek its way out through the clouds! Unfortunately, the ever reliable ice cream man who is always there (even in March) was unable to be there with the social distancing in place!

My fastest time of the day was 64.57s which I’m pleased with as I achieved my aim of beating my time from last year!

Car handled extremely well allowing me to reach 132mph over Avon Rise; thanks to all the hard work Steve put into the car outside of working hours during those lockdown months!

Finished the day as 16th out of 112 competitors which I am very happy about.

Pictures thanks to Steve Kilvington