The forecast bode ill for our Club’s Wiscombe Park hill climb and true to form the day started wet and slippery. This situation wasn’t helped by a car which having knocked its oil filter off driving of a trailer proceeded to drive down the hill to the paddock before the start of practice. I arrived to find marshals frantically sweeping after having applied copious amounts of cement dust to most of the hill; this caused the start of the meeting to be delayed while the MSA steward inspected the track.

The first practice runs were therefore run in very difficult conditions with rain and an oily course. In the pre 1954 class John Dent (Cooper- JAP Mk VI) led the way posting 55.63 seconds from Nigel Ashman (Cooper- Norton Mk VI) on 58.91 seconds. Sadly missing from the paddock on the day were Colin Rawlinson’s Smith Buckler and Tony Hodson’s Cooper Mk II which has not been seen for a great many years, the restoration of which could not be finished in time.

On the second practice runs Nigel Ashman found plenty of speed to improve to 53.62 seconds to pip Alistair Dent in the Hornet by one hundredth of a second while John Dent was unable to improve on his first run time. A smaller number of cars ran in the 1954 on class with Charles Reynolds (Cooper-JAP Mk IX) non starting. Simon Frost, sharing Mark Palmer’s ex Murray Rainey Cooper-Norton Mk IX, was quickest in the first session posting 61.69 seconds from James Holland (Cooper- JAP Mk VIII) on 62.20 seconds. The positions were reversed in the second session with James Holland improving to 55.35 seconds with Simon Frost improving to 57.04 seconds.

A good number of V-Twins turned out including the interesting Cooper Mk VI of John Bennett fitted with the unique ohc JAP V-Twin created by Robin Jackson. This features cammy Norton heads and barrels mated to a JAP twin crankcase. The engine has a long and illustrious history, albeit not fitted to this car. First practice showed Andrew Bennett (Cooper Mk V) to be quickest by a substantial margin on 56.42 seconds from Guy Murray in the Harley powered Cooper Mk V on 63.34 seconds. In the second practice runs Andrew Bennett improved considerably to 50.37 seconds while Tom Willoughby got to grips with the fearsome blown ex Dickie Henderson Mk VII to record 56.54 seconds.

For the competition itself the course was largely dry with the only serious damp patches remaining in the Esses under the shelter of the trees. Starting with the pre 1954 cars, Alistair Dent was quickest after the first runs recording 52.10 seconds from Nigel Ashman on 52.90 seconds and Jan Nycz in his beautifully turned out Staride-JAP on 56.38 seconds. Shirley Munro had the misfortune to melt the piston in her Cooper-JAP Mk IV a mere ten days ahead of the journey down to Pau for the 500 race at the GP Historique (She made it and finished - Ed).

Classified Results Pre-1954