Chairman's Autumn News

Added: 17th September 2007

The Sporting Trials scene has sprung back to life after the summer break, and we have had two BTRDA® Championship events so far, each of which attracted a reasonable entry. Mostly a continuation of what has gone before, but there are one or two news items to report. At the first event this autumn, the Pinford, multiple past champion Calvin Kneebone made an appearance in his old car, the very successful Imp powered Kincraft, welcome back Calvin.

There has been some comment about the extensive rule changes printed in the MSA's house magazine, Motorsports Now! The vast majority of those changes do not apply to Sporting Trials, but the confusion is as a result of the "re-branding" of PCTs to call them Car Trials. The reason for this is to try and give PCTs a new image and hopefully attract a new audience for this low cost motorsport. Whatever the reason, the term Car Trials is certain to cause some confusion with other forms of trials involving cars.

From now on regulations using the words "Car Trials" refer specifically to what used to be called PCTs or Production Car Trials. Our regs will, as always, use the term Sporting Trials.

Two drivers have dominated the results on '07 and continue to do so. Duncan Stephens and John Fack, both using Crossle cars, are vying for position in the Championships. John has won the British Championship twice and Duncan is the current BTRDA® Gold Star winner. The events so far this autumn see no change in the established order, and Duncan still leads, but has also scored in one more event, so he will be dropping scores soon which will level things out a bit.

As mentioned previously, the ‘07 BTRDA® Final, to be held in early '08, will be at the Derbyshire site in the Peak District. This is a calculated gamble, since the high ground might just be covered in snow in mid January. We have held the final their once before, but that was before "global warming". Let's hope we are lucky again, as finding suitable sites for the final is a problem, particularly since we try to move around the country as much as possible. The final brings some extra problems to the table, we need to consider the weather in the middle of winter, we need parking for around twice as many cars and trailers, and we should be within half an hour's motoring of a suitable hotel for the dinner. These restrict the choice to a few sites from the many we use each year for our championship events.