Copyright © Southern 32,  2016   Photos copyright C.Frost  All rights reserved


Dowty   - Round 10

6 November

Dowty on Facebook

A big thank you to Dave , Rob and everybody at Dowty for a very good meeting. Welcome to Southern 32 newcomers Luke, Nick and John.

Dowty must have some of the longest straights the S32 races on, so you might expect the exra power of a Super Wasp would be just what you want.  However, qualifying revealed a lot of seriously quick times with Falcon power ..... Or maybe the secret was so many of the quick locals didn’t have supers (or in Rob’s case didn’t have his super running properly)

Clubman Finals

Nick Drinan put in an excellent run to win the B final, indeed he’d have qualified well into the A if he’d gone that quick in the heats.  Steve Rhodes also exceeded his qualifying pace to take second ahead of John Dapling

In the A final Luke Drinan completed his Southern 32 debut with a win ahead of series champion Mick Metcalfe. Chris Stemman and Simon Francis were closely matched for third and fourth.


Southern 32 - 2015


The series for you!

Southern 32 - 2016


The series for you!

Le Mans 32 Team Race

Team

Drivers

Runs

Total

1

PDQ

Dave Coward, Rob Harris

101.02

108.35

103.05

108.59

421.01

2

ECES

Ian Fisher, Nick Thrower

95.63

94.27

93.47

95.73

379.10

3

Oaklands

Mick Metcalfe, Steve Rhodes

92.69

89.54

87.94

92.64

362.81

4

S & S

Scott & Simon Francis

94.75

89.29

90.94

86.90

361.88

5

Church Farm

Will & Chris Stemman

83.39

91.95

85.10

94.05

354.49

6

Team D

Luke & NicK Drinan

85.34

84.88

82.38

85.77

338.37

7

GT

John Dapling, Chris Frost

86.05

92.33

93.48

61.96

333.82

Super Production / Falcon Masters




Final

Chassis/motor

Falcon Masters

1

Dave Coward

A

24.14

JK / Falcon

1

2

Scott Francis

A

22.97

JK / Super


3

Luke Drinan

A

22.96

JK / Falcon

2

4

Will Stemman

A

16RTD

JK / Super


5

Rob Harris

B

24.52

JK / Falcon

3

6

Ian Fisher

B

24.04

JK / Super


7

Nick Thrower

B

22.85

JK / Super


8

Simon Francis

B

22.36

Genesis / Falcon

4

9

Mick Metcalfe

C

22.41

JK / Falcon

5

10

Chris Stemman

C

21.85

JK / Falcon

6

11

Chris Frost

C

21.73

Genesis / Falcon

7

12

John Dapling

C

20.94

Genesis / Falcon

8

13

Nick Drinan

D

22.37

Genesis / Falcon

9

14

Steve Rhodes

D

21.97

JK / Falcon

10

Clubman  Falcon


Final

1

Luke Drinan

A

23.09

2

Mick Metcalfe

A

22.75

3

Chris Stemman

A

21.11

4

Simon Francis

A

21.06

5

Nick Drinan

B

22.59

6

Steve Rhodes

B

21.97

7

John Dapling

B

21.77

 Clubman A final - Chris, Simon, Luke and Mick  

Super Production / Falcon Masters Finals

The overall finals often pretty much mirror the qualifying order, this time it was very different with some top times coming from lower finals.

This first example of this was the D final where Nick Drinan again went much quicker than in qualifying to win.

Mick Metcalfe won the C final ahead of Chris Stemman.
Rob Harris won the B final in what what turned out to be the fastest final of the day with his Falcon, Ian Fisher took second ahead of Nick Thrower and Simon Francis.

In the A final, Falcon powered Dave Coward and series champion Will Stemman with a super were dicing for the lead until a coming together which resulted in Will retiring. Dave went on to win, the first time this year that's been done with Falcon power. That left Scott Francis and Luke Drinan dicing for second, Scott finished about a car length ahead.

L  A final Cars and Drivers - Scott, Dave, Will and Luke  

  Dave’s winning chassis   

Le Mans 32

Dave Coward and Rob Harris certainly looked quickest round the track, and the set the 4 fastest runs of the day to win by over 40 laps.    

With 1-2 in the championship already settled, thee champioship interest was in Eces or GT taking  3rd place.  Also it meant Will Stemman and Nick Thrower were free to race for other teams.  Nick and Ian Fisher teamed up as Eces and run to a fairly clear cut second place.    Oaklands had their best away result of the season with third under a lap ahead of the Francis family team. The Stemman family were next up with their JK Falcon production car ahead of the Drinan family. John Dapling and Chris Frost teamed up as GT and were in a close packed bunch dicing for third in the  race (and championship)  till their gears failed.

2017 Southern 32

After a successful 2016 plans are well under way for the  2017 season.  I’ll be writing to clubs about rounds for next season shortly,  starting with clubs with members who raced a full championship season.

We took a vote on the bodyshell rule for next year, this was strongly in favour of  the proposal to continue with existing bodies for 2017.

Chris