The Team In Action At Longcross www.grahamrobins.net

Mark II Motorsport kicked off the 2007 season with some silverware after a fine 8th overall, 2nd in class performance at Longcross last weekend. Organised by the London Irish Motor club, the non championship event was used by the team to shake down their Group A Escort Cosworth after some extensive maintenance had been completed over the winter.

Despite the fact the event wasn’t part of a championship; the field was of the highest quality with many crews from Ireland making the trip over to support their motor Club. Contenders for victory included Kenny McKinstry driving an ex works Lotus Sunbeam, British Rallycross regular Ollie O’Donovan in a Subaru WRC and Guy Wigley driving an ex works Peugeot 306 maxi kit car.

For this event, driver Mark Welch was paired up with regular co driver Mark Norris. “We’ve had a lot of work done on the car” said Norris, “we are here to make sure it all works and for the other Mark to get some more miles under his belt before the season starts in earnest during March”.

However, an annoying glitch materialised right from the off. A small oil leak on the turbo ensured that throughout SS1, smoke filled the cockpit causing some real concern that it might even ignite. Despite the blue fog, Mark and Mark took 10th fastest time but it was all very close indeed with only 8 seconds separating the top 10.

Even heroics from Bruce the service crew couldn’t stem the oil leak, so the team decided to continue with a bit of caution just in case the silver Cosworth turned into a Red Arrow!

SS2 was another quick one and moved the team up to 9th but again all the times were really close. SS3 and 4 were longer stages and Welch hoped this would give the team chance to move up the rankings but was still peering through a blue haze. “I just wish the car would give up smoking”!

Time was lost on SS3 however when another competitor rolled out just in front of Mark 2. “We’ve noticed since our return to the sport late last year, just how close everything has now became and how difficult it is to make up lost time“ was Norris’ view of things after looking at the stage times.

The remainder of the event went to plan with the car performing well and the crew well and truly getting back into the swing of things. Unfortunately the final 2 stages of the event saw a number of crews including Mark 2 “clean the bogey time”. Rallying rules call for stages to be designed in a way that an average speed of 65mph cannot be exceeded and if it is, a minimum time rather than an actual time is awarded to those crews who achieve a faster than average 65mph (bogey time). Complicated, but it meant Mark 2 could not improve on 8th place overall.

Ollie O’Donovan took overall victory in his Subaru WRC from Simon Mauger (Escort RS) and Haydn Morgan in an extremely rapid light weight Nova finished 3rd. The final times were very, very close. Mark 2 actually finished tied 7th, but as the other crew were 1 second faster than Mark 2 on SS1, they got the higher placing. In fact the gap between 4th and 8th was a mere 12 seconds after 55 high speed miles of rallying!

“We’re pretty pleased with today’s result, the car went well, we pushed hard and got our first trophy for a while” said Welch. “We’ll get the car checked over and the oil leaks fixed and see what we can do in the next event at Smeatharpe on 4th March”. Watch this space!

Mark II Motorsport Would Like To Thank Their Sponsors :-

Posted 25th February 2007