The second round of Phil Haines brain child the Pro-trak On-road Club Challenge was held again by the Durham MCCC at the Nissan Sports Hall, Washington on Sunday 17th December 2000.

After the success of the opening round it had been hoped that we would get some more entries from other clubs and maybe more teams from some of the clubs. However only Teesside were able to put in another team. This left the same 4 clubs with entries. Durham, Teesside, Long Benton and South Shields. With the extra Teesside team there were 7 teams competing.
The track was a tighter, narrower one than the first round, still laid on polished wood. Durham, Long Benton and South Shields were well used to racing on this surface and most of the Teesside drivers had learned from a fortnight previous. This meant that hopefully racing would be tighter and more competitive.

The format of the racing was the same as before, with 5 rounds of racing, not qualifying. Each team would have one driver in each race and it was up to the team captain who to put in each race. The only stipulation was that no driver could race in more than one heat per round.

First round was run staggered starts to give everyone a better chance of settling in better. Then the following rounds were run with line starts, as proper races.  The system worked well although some first corner accidents were still evident. Things got better in later rounds.
It soon became clear that there were 2 groups, the first 3 teams from round 1 and the rest. Durham went into an early lead but did not pull away as last time.

This time Teesside "A" were making more of a show and kept within touch with some inspired results. Long Benton found the going more of a problem this time and gradually dropped back.
The new Teesside team, Tiny tots (christened by Bill as being a nicer name than their idea) showed good speed but lost out on experience or the surface and finished 5th  behind South Shields and ahead of Teesside B and C.

Again it was almost impossible to keep track of individual racers as they moved around. However it was points at stake and that was clear enough. It was 1 for first, 2 for 2nd to 7 for seventh. This made scoring very easy. The points table is on the points page.

Even though I had all 4 TRCC teams to look after, as before I was taking most interest in Teesside "A" and Ian and Peter.
The gamesmanship obvious in round 1was not evident at this event and this made the racing much better and more enjoyable to watch.

TQ from last time, David Snee, rolled in at 10.30 (late) looking a bit worse for wear. It had been his birthday the day before and he had "made merry". This showed in the early stages but by the end of the day was back in almost dominant fashion, posting a fantastic 20 lapper that had Bill on race control having to adjust the minimum lap times to avoid missing laps.
The track became much quicker as the day wore on and TQ went from 16 laps to 20 over the 5 rounds.
Durham "new boy" Simon Hudspeth also managed 20 laps to take second with Peter 3rd with 19/312.99

Teesside drivers scores
Chris Roe 8, Peter Craig 5, Richard Norris 13, Jason H-Y 19, Adam Darcy 14, Ian Craig 11, George P 33, Chris Bakos 32, Dimitris K 27, Ian Johnstone 20, Glenn Atterton 31, Neil Hamilton 21, Liam Davies 28, Cameron Maclean 24, Tony Doyle 34, Alex Inglis 23, Craig Winkworth 28, Alfie D 34, Peter Watt 21, Kevin Jones 18 (4 rounds), Mike Crallan 24, James Johnstone 31, Martin Oliver 25, Alex  Curry 23

Ian was using his TA04 to better effect than the Axis-pro and had some good point scores although in the end his final position of 11th was slightly worse than round 1.
The last heat of the scoring meeting pitted Ian against Phil Haines and Phil obviously knew how much Ian wanted to win and decided not to put his transponder on! By the time this was noticed and rectified, Phil was in 7th and although he caught up, could not gain any places.

top_qualifiers.JPG (56819 bytes)The only time I had to take a photo. The top qualifiers out of the teams (5 anyway) l to r Craig Winkworth, Dimitris Katsanis, Peter Craig, Mike Crallan, David Snee.
The next round is to be at Teesside on 14th January 2001, doors open at 10.00am.