Pictures by Richard Field, and for lots more pictures from this event, see Sean Pearce's gallery, Here

This report is in two sections; for more pictures, and results, click 'Page 2', below.

New faces, at the Spring Solo

Our Spring Solo at Montgomery Lines included a strong proportion of first time Solo competitors, mostly also being recent new FDMC members, so in Page 1 of this report, that's who we feature first. To see who were the winners of the major awards, just keep reading, through to Page 2.

The fine Spring weather enabled us to run, as usual, four different courses, with three runs through each, and the best two times to count. As well as 40-plus FDMC members, the entrants from other clubs included two Club Triumph members, with their Spitfires - not a car we often see. In our header picture, the white one belongs to James Cooper, who went on to fnish a close second in the strongly contested Historic class, ahead of all the Midgets (some rivalries never die).

Among the first-timers, Stephen and Adam Frost were sharing a 1.1 Peugeot 106 in Class B, with Stephen finishing sixth and Adam ninth in this class. For John and Andrew Leane, this event was a first tryout for their Mk 2 Escort, which has recently been assembled, from a ready-built competition shell. And the Corsa diesel, complete with musical turbo sound effects, was being driven by Antony Triolo and Jo Clohessy.

Not just another 998 Mini - this one, driven by Tristan Beard from Southsea MC, has the very rare automatic transmision. Despite the leisurely performance of this model, Tristan took the 3rd place award in Class B, out of 11 entries in this class. In Class A, the Historics, Jeremy Bayne-Powell from MG Car Club also took third place, in his smart Midget.

Among the five lady drivers, who were mostly taking part in their first AutoSolo, Alice West was sharing the red Mazda MX5 with her dad, Peter, and Janice Frost was sharing the BMW MINI convertible with Sharron Hockaday, who also features on our next page.

Making a return to Soloing were two previous FDMC competitors, Ian Coull, whose new Skoda Octavia is the same colour as his old BMW, and David Manning, who has moved up from Minis and 106's to this Honda S2000. And in the cockpit of the red Spitfire, in full attack mode, was Club Triumph's Matt Helm. As timed by our new TAG Heuer timing system, in Class E for production sports cars, the first place award was decided by just 0.31 seconds, between David and Brett Lawrence. Under our previous manual stopwatch timing, with its greater variations, that result could have gone either way... but 'TAG tells the truth'.

This report continues, on PAGE 2

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