There was a time when a Vintage Sports Car Club race meeting, wherever it was held, had a predictable format. They consisted of some feature scratch races for Historic Racing Cars, Vintage Racing Cars, Pre-War Racing Cars and latterly an Invitation race for 1950 s Sports Racing Cars. This mixture was leavened with several short handicap races to accommodate the desire of members with less competitive cars (or possibly less competitive members) to get a bit of sport.

This meeting at Donington certainly broke that mould. In addition to all of those mentioned above, although there was only one handicap, there were races for pre-’66 Grand Prix cars, Group C Endurance cars, Drum Brake Sports Cars (of the 50s as per Monaco and the HGPCA), the Historic Motor Racing News Sports and GT Endurance race, not to mention the Team Race for Original Pre-War Sports Cars as championed by Bob Wood a fugitive from the old Coy’s International Silverstone.

This (to my mind) enhanced format will not have pleased all the members some of whom expressed their conservative opinions at the last VSCC AGM, and I suspect it reflects the drive of their outgoing President, Julian Ghosh, rather than incoming Peter Glover, but we shall see!

I am in favour of the club getting its head out of its own exhaust pipe and looking towards the horizon to see what it can contribute to the historic scene as a whole, rather than getting stuck in a narrow time-frame which has led to enormous ingenuity on the part of members who would like to go quicker, modifying their cars beyond their original manufacturers’ wildest imaginings. On the other hand, the infrastructure seemed to creak when faced with this very ambitious two day meeting, as did the very crowded paddock. Signing-on and scrutiny on Friday evening would have helped enormously.

The signing-on routine was particularly fraught and sorely tested the patience of officials and competitors alike. There must be a better way! One unfortunate in the Pre-war Team Race took virtually all day to persuade the officials that his USA licence etc was in order despite having raced with the VSCC at Silverstone in April. He was thus only able to compete in one leg of the two-day event.

Despite all this and some pretty awful weather the meeting will surely be judged a success and with a bit of tuning could be an excellent addition to the calendar.

There were the inevitable logistical difficulties I wanted to support Bob Wood’s race with my Talbot as well as the HMRN Endurance series in the HWM, which I had signed up for at the beginning of the year. Both events involved driver changes and I shared the Talbot with David Morris, who had a brilliant weekend as despite appalling conditions he won his 5^th Seaman Trophy race in Martin’s ERA. In the HMRN series James Wood is my co-driver but he was competing against us in an Alta in the pre-war race.

The pre-war race was won by Flavien Marçais and Gareth Burnett in the Talbot 105 I had sold John Ruston a few years ago, Richard, who had fastest lap, was a close second in the Lago because it took him longer as a single driver to run around his car than it did the youngsters to swap half-way through each race. David and I finished 9^th but the combination was good enough to secure us the team prize (if there was one!). On the second day it was raining quite hard and when I took over from David I literally could not see a thing. It was not until I got back to the paddock, when I was complaining to him about it, that I realised that he had removed the aero-screen on his warm up lap; although he said it was even worse with it. It really is ironic that the VSCC should need the impetus from outside its own organisation to get a grid together of the cars which should form its CORE, it is a measure of how far they have strayed down the ‘specials’ route.

The Endurance race was fore-shortened because the organisers were running out of time, so although I had started the HWM with a 50min stint (the max. permitted) to be followed by a similar effort from James, leaving me with a final 20 mins to the flag; it was a puzzled James who took the flag and I didn’t get my last drive. Because some others had changed and James had moved briskly up through the field we finished 10^th. The winners were Flavien and Nick Wigley in the latter’s Iso and second was the Cobra of James Lindsay and Bill Wykeham. I was rather surprised to be summoned along with several others to the Clerk of the Course. Naturally I assumed that they wished to pass comment on the two black stripes of my rubber that James had left in the pit-lane after I had handed over to him. However the fault was mine for entering the pits too quickly, so it was I that had to eat humble pie, on reflection it is the first time in 40 years of racing that anyone has ever accused me of going too quickly; such a shame that I chose an inappropriate place as otherwise I could have used it to silence the family who always accuse me of going too slowly! Mind you I felt better about being in the headmaster’s study when David owned up to having been there as well for a flag infringement. He suffered the added embarrassment of his mobile phone ringing in the middle of his dressing down!

As usual I didn’t do much spectating but the hospitality suites of the HGPCA, Gregor Fisken for the Endurance and the VIP facilities for guests of the VSCC all afforded excellent grub and a good view.

S.C.