Southern 32 - 2015

The series for you!

Round 5 Bournemouth - 31 May

Club web site

Bournemouth club welcomed the Southern 32 for it’s 5th round of the year.

Will Stemman produced the best 3 minute run of the day on 34.98, while Murray Tucker did a pair of 34s to qualify second.    Three drivers got into the 33s, all with Falcon power, followed by a closely matched bunch of super prod runners in the 32s.  

There were 7 Falcon Clubman runners.  The B final was won by Mick Metcalfe, the championship leader missing the A final for the first time this year. Bill Jenner was second ahead of Terry Blackmore.

The A final consisted of 3 drivers who know the track very well, and S32 newcomer Joe Morgans on his first visit to the track.   During the A final warm up, top qualifier Simon Francis suddenly rushed to the pits in need of a soldering iron. Once that was sorted, the race got under way with Simon and Dave Hammond racing for the lead.  Dave drove well to win by over a lap.  There was a close race for third, Mark Hammond taking it just ahead of Joe.

Le Mans 32

In the Le Mans 32 team race, GT took an early lead, while Championship leaders Harwood racing had a bad start with lead wires, wheels and a braid coming adrift. That left Luton and Eces as the closest challengers.    Gumbo Slot made use of the new “shared driver” rule so John Ovens ran with Simon Francis.  Simon’s own S&J team was running a Falcon powered JK production car with which Simon and Joe kept on the pace of some of the group 12s.     By half distance GT were 20 laps up on Luton who were 5 laps ahead of Eces with the S&J Falcon powered JK production car 4th just ahead of Gumbo and the Hammond family team.

Murray set the fastest time of the day for GT in the third segment, and they looked on course for a comfortable victory till the car slowed dramatically with worn out motor brushes (they were new at the start of the race).  A pit stop managed to fix that well enough to get the car nearly back up to full speed to win by 9 laps from Luton and Eces.  Gumbo and S& J filled the next two places. Harwood who only recovered as far as 6th despite some rapid segments.   D&S were slowed with brush gear problems, even Murray’s recent experience with working on hot brush gear wasn’t enough to get them back up to speed.  The second Falcon team Norfolk and Chance found that gave them some chance - they were 7th.

The next round is the Oaklands / Leicester double header in June.

Chris

The overall finals commenced with the D, Bill Jenner won ahead of  John Ovens and Terry Blackmore.  

Joe Morgans led much of the C final, but a couple of offs near the end meant Mark Hammond won, while Joe finished just inches ahead of Ian Fisher with his super.  

Dave Hammond was top qualifier for the B with his Falcon, but was in all sorts of trouble in the final.   The trio of super prod runners were very closely matched in qualifying, and equally closely matched in the final.  Paul Harwood won from Stan Alton and Nick Thrower.  

Murray Tucker won the  A final while Will Stemman could quite reproduce the speed of that one qualifying run.  The Falcon Masters race was pretty close, Simon Francis just ahead of Chris Frost till near the end when the gap opened up

Clubman A Final

Joe, Simon, Dave and Mark

Dave’s Clubman winning car

 Simon’s Falcon Masters winner  

    Murray’s overall winner    

Copyright © Southern 32,  2015  Photos copyright C. Frost and M.Tucker  All rights reserved

The winning GT team car