MG Owners Club Racing 2001

The qualifying for this race had to be split into two sessions, one for each of the two drivers. Conditions were damp, after some early morning rain. After some initial confusion with the times and grid positions issued by the time keepers, a revised grid was issued at 12.30pm. The first grid had only taken one of the drivers times into account and some peeople who at first thought they were up at the front lost a few places.

Pole position went to Ian Evans and Robert Barnard, next were the Hounslow based drivers Nick Golhar and Darryl Davis. On the second row of the grid we had Darren Winter and BTCC touring car star Jim Edwards jnr. Next to Darren and Jim we had the County Radiators team of Doug Cole and Nick Evans. The two front rows were all class B cars, MG Maestros, the first of the Class A cars was the 'Guiness coloured' MGB of Dave Amphlett on row three, with another Maestro next to him, that being the number 8 car of Kevin Bull.

The Snetterton grid was a full one, 10 rows in all, with 20 cars! (and 40 drivers)

A long safety car period toward the end of the one hour race produced a thrilling three lap sprint to the finish. Nick Golhar it was who held off under extreme pressure Ian Evans, with Darren Winter a close third! Early leaders Doug Cole/Nick Evans fell back after an unscheduled pit stop when some panel damage was rubbing a tyre, no one had thought to bring a spare wheel to the pit so there was some dealy as they rushed to paddock to find a spare. Until then they had battled it out side by side with the Aircourieruk.com backed MG Maestro of Darren Winter and Jim Edwards jnr.
Darryl Davis who had taken the first shift in Nick Golhars Maestro had gamble on running with dry tyres, while many had opted for wets. Somehow the rain held off for the duration of the race. Davis also waited until the lead car driven by Jim Edwards jnr pitted for his driver change, before coming in to hand over to Golhar. Davis and Golhar like some others had practiced there change over rountine. This practice paid off and Golhar left just ahead of Darren Winter to take the lead!
It was shortly after this point that an accident meant the despatch of the safety car. The cautionary period lasted for aboy fifteen minutes as two accident damage cars were removed from the circuit. Jim Gotobed's Midget had spun into the path of kevin Bulls Maestro. Heavy impact caused severe damage to both cars with both drivers escaping, thankfully without injury!. Once the green flag was shown, and as Murray always says it was GO GO GO!!
There was an awful lot of animated activity on the pitwall the race went into the final few laps.
As mentioned already the race victory went to Darryl Davis and Nick Golhar

It was a MG Maestro 1-2-3 (class B cars) with the first Class A car past the post in 6th place, that being the MGB Roadster of Dave Amphlett and Tony Rodgers. The next Class A car past the post was the MGB GT of Darren Young and Huw Taylorwho finished in 8th place.

Jim Baynams poor showing in any form of an endurance event contiued when he was forced to retire as early as lap three when the gearbox blew itself apart. Jim told me after the race that he had never known an MGB gearbox to fail in such a dramatic fashion, and was bitterly dissapointed not to have finished the race!.

Race Incidents