Well what a day the first event of the season started with thick fog which quickly cleared during the Formula Ford testing to reveal bright sunshine all day long! Not expected by many of us we all ended up either tanned or very burnt! The day was full of events with Prebble and Kilby taking pole and second in the Saloon car qualifying, to both have engine problems and not be able to compete in the main race later in the day, leaving pole empty for 3rd and 4th place for Squibb and Cox. TT’s very own Nick Charles and Jason Cooper managed to get pole in their class C and D, with Mark Wyatt in his Astra getting Pole for Class B.

Coming to the main race in bright Wiltshire sunshine all the cars left the grid to a huge collision behind the class A cars, around 6 cars were collected up in the damage including Wyatt, Wills, Bird, both of the farther and son Urqhart team and Nick Charles, the race was promptly red flagged and only Nick Charles of those involved made it back for the restart, Nick had suffered a large amount of panel damage to passanger door area but the car was deemed fit to race. After the track was promptly cleared by the Marshalls and CC team the race was back underway with Dave Kift having to retire shortly from the line with engine problems, Nick Charles starting from the pits was quick to work his way through the grid to finsh 2nd in his class with Will De Claudio to get his first win in Class C after leaving Class D last year. There was a battle for pole with Brian Cox and Barry Squibb swapping postitions several times to finally leave Barry Squibb victorious. Jason Cooper had a fight on his hands with Olly Lewis following closley behind all race until he managed to get past Cooper on lap 7, luckily Jason managed to regain the lead on lap 8 to get the Win for Class D. Unfortunatly Talk Torque’s Alan Dixon had to retire on the 3rd lap due to loss of brakes going into camp corner at 100mph! luckily Alan managed to control the car around the corner and nurse it into the pits.

So after race 1 the points look like this.

Officical Timing can be found here >> http://www.tsl-timing.com/ccrc/2009/91668.pdf

Lets hope everyone manages to get their cars back to track this season and for the majority of them that they make the next race day on the 4th May.

Here is some in-car footage from the race and the 1st corner incident.