I had a fun race in the 1971 Escort RS1600. After all of the discos and general messing about in qualifying
I ended up P7 on the grid! I was expecting to get hassled by quite a few cars, but surprisingly the ones behind all seemed to recede rather quickly. The one exception was Frex, and he managed to catch and pass me after a handful of laps. I then successfully passed Jarda in another Capri, and tried to keep pace with Frex. Later on there was an "altercation" between Legzy's Mustang and another car. That allowed me to move up to P5 (with Clive not too far ahead at that point). However, Legzy recovered and eventually managed to catch me. He passed me on the main straight at one point, but I managed to outbrake him and pass him back around the outside of the next corner. That was very pleasing
Nevertheless, he was close enough to outgun me again on the next straight, and this time he made it stick.
I hung on to Legzy's tail for several laps, as both of us very slowly started to catch Clive's Capri. Then Legzy's tyres got the better of him, and he spun off. Unlucky, mate
I then concentrated on trying to catch Clive, but he had just enough pace to keep me 3 or 4 seconds behind him until we crossed the finishing line.
I was very pleased to finish P5 in the slower Escort. This was probably helped by others having problems, but I seemed to have reasonably decent pace throughout the race. I was also very consistent, with only one or two "dodgy" moments when I temporarily became a lawnmower. However, even these were only for two or three seconds, so no real damage was done.
Well done to John, Geoffers, and Frex
