National Finals, Santa Pod Raceway, England

Words and pictures Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes
Thanks to TSI Timers (Europe) for access to the timing data

The UK’s 2010 championship season came to a close in disappointing fashion at Santa Pod when the good old British weather decided to settle into one of it’s cold and damp moods after only a couple of classes had completed their first round of eliminations. With many of the championships decided over the weekend (with the exception of the majority of the ACU bike classes who have their own season ender in October) and a couple of pointers to the future, qualifying on the Saturday had it’s ups and downs. One significant up was the testing out of a new VP traction compound on the track that the SPR crew had loving caressed into the quickest all asphalt racing surface a couple of weeks previously; the bite in the track really kicked in by the final qualifying session leaving many racers and officials favourably impressed with the temperature range and performance of the glue and looking forward to getting the high horsepower hitters of the European tour running on it next season.

MSA Pro Modified

A season of trouble came to an end for Andy Robinson with the MSA Pro Modified points championship, and a low qualifying effort of 6.329/226 in the first session seemed to be the first step on another domestic event win. However, that was the end of the weekend for the Smokin’ Stude as a spun main bearing was discovered during maintenance back in the pits. Although this is Robinson’s third MSA title in four years, he’ll be relieved to see the back of 2010.

With Summernationals winner Kev Slyfield doing a pretty good job of demolishing the block during the burnout in the first session and Graham Ellis swiping the wall after tyreshake threw his ex-Troy Critchley Cuda out of shape, not to mention Andy Wright (in Bert Englefield’s Ford) and Mick Payne (in the ex-Gordon Appleton Camaro) not managing to complete licensing, it looked like Roger Moore and the Shakespeare Engineering Components Viper would be a strong favourite to pick up his first Pro Mod trophy with a pair of 6.9s being the closest to competitive numbers outside of Robinson’s pole setter.