PIRELLI MARANELLO FERRARI CHALLENGE

PADDOCK STORIES: ROUNDS 12 & 13 : CASTLE COMBE - 13/14 SEPTEMBER 2003

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• Nick Archos, as the commentator preferred to call him, was clearly a happy bunny. Sunday's race was his first PMFC win and he passed Attard in what was a clean and fair dice between two sensible and talented drivers. He was also showing off his new Lamborghini parked in the paddock but we couldn't tell you what type it was because it had an unpronounceable name and there was never a chance of spelling it. No surprise that it was gold.
  
  
• Speaking of boyz toyz, Graham Reeder turned up on a megathrob Ducati. Difficult to imagine him all in leathers but at least it gave a rest to those dratted race overalls he wears all day long.
  
  
• And speaking of Graham Reeder he is now the proud owner of his very own 360/Ch, one of the ex-Roden ones. After belting it around Silverstone at the recent track day he decided not to race it at Combe but to concentrate on fending off Ted Reddick for the C-class championship. Didn't quite work out because Ted won both times so it will go down to the wire at the final race at Thruxton.
  
  
• With the expectation that Ferrari will bring out a radical new 2004 360/Ch based upon the Stradale, complete with rear wing, a number of the current ones look like being moved on. Roden still has one up for sale, Mark Cale's and Gary Culver's are available, and both of John Seale's can be bought. Might be some good bargains around then.
  
  
• The noise squabbles amongst the 360s also brought some amusing asides. Whilst the Roden boys tried to play it straight up the middle by having their cars re-tested five times, another team, nameless of course, merely assured the noise judge that they had fixed the problem and were promptly given their scrutineering ticket. The exhaust, of course, hadn't been touched.
  
  
• With increasing concerns about poor driving standards two of the PMFC championship stewards held a fairly tough drivers' briefing. Next year the series will get its own permanent Clerk of the Course, John Felix. A bit of a hard man, apparently, who will hopefully sort things out. All the talk, however, seemed to go straight over the heads of some drivers who were still hitting each other during the first race.
  
  
• Swifty had a last minute scrabble around York to get some nice trophies for the Ferrari formula classic race taking place the same weekend. Duncan McKay had promised some more scale 250GTO castings as at Donington but when he took his bat home after his 308 was declared ineligible for the formula classic race the GTOs went with him. Shame because they were really nice. But at least his fence got painted that weekend.
  
  
• Walking into the JMH canopy caused a bit of a double-take because there was Geoff Shilton with a JMH shirt on. It was not because he had forgotten his Shiltech shirt in the laundry but, with Mark Cale not racing on the day, he had hired himself out to the rival team for the weekend to look after the 360s of Terry Coleman and Phil Burton. We thought Julie still cuts a much better dash in a JMH shirt than Geoff.
  
  
• Several drivers did both the PMFC races as well as the Ferrari formula classic race on the Sunday. Both Graham Reeder and Mike Furness drove a 355/Ch in the PMFC and a 328 GTB in the classic race in which they finished third and fourth respectively. Interestingly, Mike Spicer put slicks on his 308 GTB for the PMFC race and did a best lap of 1:25.628 and then reverted back to PZeroCs for the classic race and did a best lap of 1:25.631. Not quite sure what that proves.......

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