Welsh Sports & Saloons:
Round 6 - Qual 10th - finished 6th (3rd in class)
Round 5 - Qual tth - finished 10th (5th in class)
Round 4 - Qual 6th - finished 7th (2nd in class) (PB 1m 6.523s)
Round 3 - Qual 8th - dnf (broken throttle linkage)
Round 2 - Qual 11th - finished 8th (3rd in class)
Round 1 - Qual 11th - finished 11th (6th in class)
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Club Ginetta
Snetterton - Race 1 & 2 - Qual 5th - finished 5th
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LATEST REPORTS:
Club Ginetta - Snetterton - 5th May - The PMT Motorsport team spent a ‘quiet afternoon’ in Norfolk with the fledgling Club Ginetta series at Snetterton on Bank Holiday Monday. After watching his beloved Saints side secure their championship survival with a 3-2 home win against Sheffield Utd on Sunday afternoon (apologies to any Leicester City supporters), team driver Paul and the full 2008 technical team of Malcolm, Dan and Jacques Wood set off to East Anglia for the two-race meeting on Monday. An early morning start saw Paul struggling to get to grips (quite literally folks) with the Club Ginetta regulation Michelin road tyres, finding the Ginetta G20 very hard to predict and control, especially under braking, but at least his best time of 1m 27.542s would put him in 5th spot of the disappointingly small eight-car grid.
Right from the start of the first race just before lunch, Paul found himself continuing to struggle to match the pace of the first four cars – three of which were in full 2009 Ginetta championship spec – but he was easily able to pull away from the remaining three competitors despite not being able to significantly or consistently better his qualifying times. Race one was narrowly won by Giles Dawson by just two-tenths of a second from Stuart Pearson (no, not the Southampton manager!!)
A change of direction on tyre pressures for race two on Monday afternoon resulted in an improved performance with Paul at least able to mix it with the four faster cars off the start line, but once again their better overall pace proved too much and Paul settled into another secure (i.e lonely) fifth spot but with a series of improving lap times and a fastest lap that was over two seconds better than in qualifying. Race two saw a repeat of race one’s result but this time Giles won by a significant 10-second margin from Stuart.
While in many respects it was good to get back to the relaxed feel of the Ginetta series of the past, and to see a number of old friends and competitors, it is clear that more testing on the Club-spec rubber will be needed if Paul is to be able to get within a respectable distance of the faster drivers and cars when he returns to the series at Mallory Park in September
Welsh Sports - Pembrey - 19th/20th April
- After missing most of the 2007 season the PMT Motorsport team got their 2008 campaign of to a solid start at the opening rounds of the new-look Welsh Sports & Saloon Car Championship at Pembrey at the weekend. After getting some mileage on the car at Brands Hatch and Mallory Park over the previous week running the slick-tyres planned for the Welsh series, the team’s preparations for Pembrey were interrupted by a failed alternator during testing on Friday afternoon, meaning a quick scramble to source a replacement locally ahead of qualifying on Saturday. The repaired Ginetta G20 was ready to go in good time but the Welsh weather on Saturday morning was proving fickle with light rain making tyre choice difficult. Team driver Paul Trowbridge and senior mechanic Malcolm Morrison, entering their 12th season of motorsport together, played safe and reverted to their tried and tested Dunlop D02 lightly treaded rubber option for the 15-munute session, but just as the track seemed to be drying, a red-flag delay to recover the stranded-on-three-wheels Caterham of Stephen Humphries meant that the final five-minutes were run in heavier rain and that any improvement in times was unlikely.
Paul’s qualifying time would see him start in 11th place of the 22-car field – a great entry for the first rounds of the WRDA series after the problems in getting full grids in 2007 – with most of the other Class-B cars within sight. The light rain of the morning turned into steady precipitation for the afternoon, so Paul went to the grid on full-wet Dunlops for the 15 minute-plus-one-lap race and a rolling start. Paul was held up off the start by the Nissan Primera Super-Touring car of reigning champion Keith Butcher that was not running at all cleanly and further incidents and avoidances dropped Paul back further in the first two laps. However once in clear air Paul was able to chase down Mark Nicholson in his 1800 Honda Integra Type R but just as Paul passed Mark into 10th place the race was red-flagged after Ken Rattenbury made very heavy impact with the barriers on the outside of Honda Curve. On count-back Paul was then classified 11th and the team packed up for the night with two more races to come on Sunday.
The weather was much improved on Sunday with a dry track and occasional sunshine and in the second race of the weekend Paul was immediately on the pace on a full-dry setup. Over the opening laps Paul was engaged in a classic power vs handling battle with the VW Golf VR6 of series new-comer M(ike?) Wright with Paul repeatedly thwarted in his attacks under braking by the power advantage of the Golf’s 2.9 litre engine. Finally Paul made a brave move stick sitting it out around the outside of the ‘Spitfires’ right hander to gain the inside line into the double left of Dibeni and the crossing to secure what was now 8th place overall and third in class B. Once again any further progress was thwarted by another red-flag this time for Mike Woods’ stranded Honda Civic, but both Paul and the team were very happy with the result and the level of competitiveness in the closely fought class B (1600 – 2000cc sports/saloons (yes the Golf was from the larger engine class C (over 2000cc)).
After the attrition of the previous two rounds 16 cars took the start of round three with Paul in 8th place on the grid but a heavy crash for Nigel Bowen’s Porsche 911 had the race red-flagged after a few laps resulting in a restart with Paul now in 7th. Away from the line again the battle between class B competitors Mark Nicholson, Rhodri Jenkins, Anthony Allitt (both in Civic Type R’s) Paul, and Ken Wood was fraught but after an over-ambitious attempt to both pass Anthony and Rhodri at the hairpin, Paul’s race was curtailed by a broken throttle linkage but still returned to the paddock with Malcolm and Dan happy with the weekend’s efforts and results.
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