Hi all. The last month and a bit has been busy for the Travers household but we have managed to get a bit of motorsport in, although not as much as I would have liked—I have yet to make it to one of the summer autotests. However Ralph has been flying the Team Travers flag at Farningham and there has been some tough opposition in class B from some of the new faces to our Autotest series. Some tight and challenging tests have put the Vectra at a slight disadvantage, being one of the longer cars in the class. By the time you read this I hope to have competed at the June 17th Autotest.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the Vectra has come back from the last test with a very noisy power steering pump. Now this started making noises during the last 12 car series, but I think now it has really become a problem. Hmmm, the Haynes manual has come out so it looks serious!!

Rewinding a bit to 16th May, we took a trip to Norfolk and the Hethel Sprint, our first foray this year into the Sevenoaks Speed League events. We decided to go up on the Saturday afternoon as I really couldn’t face getting up a 5am on the Sunday morning (plus a night in a hotel appealed!)

Sunday morning dawned warm and sunny, but I was really quite nervous about the event. I hadn’t been on a “proper” track for quite some time and after watching an in-car video of a lap of the circuit, the tyre walls loomed large and unforgiving!

On arrival we were greeted very cheerily by Tina and Neville Moon. It was nice to see them both at the helm of this event. After signing in and a walk of the course I was even more nervous. Part of the lap (for those who don’t know Hethel) consists of a one and half revolution of the roundabout and, as my children will happily confirm, I often miss exits at roundabouts!! Oh dear!

Ralph decided I should go first for Practice 1, so off I went. It was a cautious first time out and when I got to the end I climbed out with a big grin on my face. Made it and it was so much fun! Just needed to go faster. Which I did. I was out there to improve my times. Ralph and I knew the Vectra couldn’t touch the rest of the cars in our class for competitive lap times but some nice family rivalry ensued with the 0-64 foot times which were provided. I managed to beat Ralph’s start times on each of the timed runs...Yeah! Ralph said it was probably because I got more practice at this by racing into parking spaces in Sainsbury’s car park. Hmmmmm! Sour grapes methinks!

Anyway, I managed to negotiate the roundabout absolutely fine and had to concentrate more on keeping the Vectra on a tight line, as it was understeering madly round that part of the lap. I have to say that I had to fight this mad urge not to slow down and look right to make sure the road was clear! The instinct to be safe in the car is strong in me....must be something to do with being a Mum!

We had a brilliant time and it was great to have the company of several other 7oaks members. We would love to do Hethel again in the future. Daniel Whittington has written his view of the event in this month’s Acorn.

While on Speed league stuff, it would be really nice to have some more reports of the events from some other competitors to go into Acorn. It doesn’t have to be pages and pages, 500 words will do and a photo or two would be nice. I look forward to reading some of them very soon!

Of course the very next weekend we were having another night away at the Golden Jubilee Ball at Leeds Castle. What a great night. It was an honour to meet Vic Elford in person and hear his wonderful anecdotes of his racing career. Thank you for making the journey from Florida, Vic, I am only sorry there wasn’t more time to talk more to you. Ralph and I along with the Webbers and the Rodgers, had rooms for the night just off the courtyard. Very nice too! Thanks to all who came, it was great to see so many from the past and present, helping to celebrate our club’s 50th anniversary.