Marilyn Monroe Memorial Autotest 4 Aug
Wednesday was one of those days.....again As I was preparing stuff for the event, it was a blistering afternoon, with the sun splitting the sky and my big dog lying in the shade panting. Loaded the Kangoo up, headed off for Nutts Corner and halfway there the rain came on. By the time Tony and myself had the place set up, I had the by now almost traditional Nutts Corner soggy scrotum, but never mind, the rain let off for a while and we got started, though about 20 minutes late because of competitors walking the courses. Eventually I started Kevin (elderly fella) McNamee off on the first run and people took the hint.
Everything ran fairly smoothly after that, though the rain returned occasionally and at times, quite a crowd formed under the tailgate of the Kangoo. With the already dark sky, dusk came earlier than usual, with the last few drivers of the Test A run 3 completing it with headlights on!
The rain also played up with the timing system. A wet smartphone with a touch sensitive screen caused a few timing anomalies, however, as usual, we also recorded every time on paper, with this proving very necessary. The electronic results were uploaded into Excel and then there was a bit of sorting to see what odd times came to light. Fastest time uploaded on Test 1 was 42 seconds by junior driver Christopher Newell in his trusty 1.0 Micra, but it would hardly take Hercule Poirot to suspect that one and fastest on Test 2 was Matthew Walker with a ferocious 19.5 seconds. As a halt was called when it got too dark, with many drivers still requiring a 4th run, the results were changed to '3 runs to count and drop the worst'. Hopefully you are all OK with that rather than try to add a bogey average time to non-runners. After a bit of analysis and 'spot the error', the results below were finally arrived at.
Congratulations to Simon Brien on 1st place in his Midget Atlantis, with runner up Jimmy Dougan in the flying purple mini.
Dirtiest face of the event definitely went to Nathan Reid in the Dutton, especially after the lost front mudguard.
I think everyone had a good evening, possibly with the exception of poor Dermot in the red Frogeye who after one run spent the rest of the night under the bonnet with the water running through him. It'll be better next time Dermot.......
Thankyou to Gordon and Marino for standing in the rain doing 'spotter', the girls in the van for the catering on a miserable night and an extra thanks to the timekeepers at Test 2, Andrew Molyneaux and Andrew Molyneaux Jr. Andrew Jr got an autotest car a few months ago, practiced at Millisle airfield for a bit, got himself all psyched up to do his first event with us....and then broke his arm playing rugby. Hopefully healed by the next one and he can come and play.........
That's all for now, so it's goodbye Norma Jean and we can now look forward to the Willie Heaney Multivenue Autotest on Saturday 4th September. Hopefully the weather will be kinder to us.
Colin McBride MBE TSCCNI Club Secretary