13th
July 1980 - Bovingdon
Report and news from Short Circuit - August 1980
The third
staging of the Graham Hill Memorial Trophy for GP Midgets
took place at Bovingdon on July 13th. Four overseas drivers;
Henk Hanssen, Jan van Rengs, Henk Van Rengs and Karl Kilianski
made the long trip over the water.
The draw
for grid positions certainly did not favour the foreigners
with Jan Van Rengs drawing, 22 and top British drivers Basil
Craske and Mick Bonner drawing, 5 and 6. The race got underway
after 3 warm up laps on a dry track. Alf Boarer made the early
running with Mick Bonner and Basil Craske in tow. Bonner closed
right up on Boarer after 10 laps but in doing so he let Craske
through to take second. Craske then started challenging Boarer
for the lead, these two along with Bonner and Jan Van Rengs
travelling as one. By lap 20 Van Rengs took over the lead
but nearly lost it as he went over back marker John Lowe's
front wheel and came down very hard. All was fortunately ok
for Van Rengs and he roared off into the distance winning
rather comfortably from Craske, Boarer, Bonner, Gary Pollard
and Hansen.
By the second
race the inevitable Bovingdon rain had arrived. With the surface
now being, wet it proved chaotic on the first bend and several
cars ended up in a heap, with unfortunately Pollard and Ray
Rapson retiring. Roland Parker was the driver who had hit
the front and started pulling away from second placed Bonner
who was spending a lot of time running along in the ditch.
Bonner was suffering badly with oversteer and Hanssen went
by on the pit bend to take second place. Once there Hanssen
started to close on Parker and he succeeded in taking the
lead when Parker developed a misfire with 2 to go. Hanssen
ran out an easy victor from Parker and Jan Van Rengs.
The third
race was run in atrocious conditions but Bonner didn't seem
to mind as he pressed on regardless to make it three different
winners in the afternoon by leading Craske and Jan Van Rengs
over the line.
At long
last somebody has copied Basil Craske and bought out a VW
powered Midget. The driver of the said car is Rick Hammond
who has received sponsorship from Datatext Word Processing.
Paul Sherlock and Tony Paxman, formerly racing only at Baarlo
are now likely to race at British meetings most of the time
- That's two more drivers anyway!
