RICHARD Woods from Runcorn was racing his Horsehoe Garage sponsored 2 litre Ford Focus in the CSSC ‘Tin Tops’ championship endurance race at the weekend’s Classic Sports Car Club Autumn Race Meeting at Oulton Park.

Having won the last race at Mallory Park, Stuart would be subject to an additional 30 seconds “penalty” in accordance with the race series rules (to ‘liven up’ the racing by preventing a good driver building up too much of a lead during these longer than normal races).

Qualifying resulted in him being 2nd on the grid but a poor start saw him lose several places in the usual rush into the first corner. After a few laps, the car lost 2nd gear and a few laps later, 3rd gear went as well.

In conjunction with his additional 30 second “penalty”, the gear box problems wrecked any chances of winning the race or even making the Podium and Richard eventually finished in a very respectable 6th place overall in spite of the problems he had encountered.

Richard was pleased with the car and the result as he had not had any significant problems throughout the year so it couldn’t be annoyed it had lost some gears on the last race of the season.

Richard is already looking forward to next season knowing he has a good car but just needing some simple repairs.