13/09/2021
MALCOLM SWINDEN MEMORIAL ENDURANCE REPORT
Sunday 12th September saw the annual 3 hour endurance at ELK Motorsport take place, renamed in memory of Malcolm Swinden, father of driver Alan Swinden who sadly passed away a few months back.
Due to the high number of drivers who had never driven the circuit, management decided that practice would be extended to 40 minutes and the race shortened to 2.5 hours.
We did brilliantly in Qualifying, managing to end up 3rd on the grid with and identical time to TGS Racing in 4th. Andrew Strike, our fastest driver, took the start and after the usual Lap 1 carnage and a short yellow flag period to clear it up, we eventually moved into 2nd place. It quickly became clear that Bairy Hollocks, and the mastermind that is Trevor John Goodwin, had taken the opportunity to complete 3 of the mandatory 5 pit stops while everyone was running at reduced pace. They rejoined only 1 lap down, such was the advantage. Nobody else stood a chance of winning the race after that 😂
After half an hour, Andrew came in to be replaced by Nick Mason for his half hour stint. We kept in the top 3 and then Chris Cheetham went out. During his half hour stint, the refuelling began. 3 teams at a time would come in, be refuelled and held for a total of 4 minutes then sent back out. Chris rejoined 5th while waiting for others to make their stops.
Still running in the top 3, Andrew went back out for a planned 20 minute stint. Chris was told by Nick that he was slower than him, so Chris made the decision to sacrifice a stint to keep position while getting through the stops. So Andrew stayed out for half an hour. Chris then went out and came straight back in allowing Nick to finish the race.
There was one downside to this; Nick hadn’t raced for quite a while and stamina was an underlying issue. With 15 minutes to go, having run in 2nd and on course for a podium, Nick sadly ran out of steam. His arms were shot to bits and he dropped from 2nd to 3rd, 4th then 5th. As the flag fell, 6th place popped him on the line by 0.2 seconds.
A valiant effort by the team to be running so competitively but we’re ultimately undone by Chris’s decision not to do a full stint.
We wish to thank Alan Swinden for the opportunity to race in his father’s honour, the staff at the circuit for their well maintained fleet and to Clark Cowell as usual for the organisation.
On to the next endurance which will be the Carol Cheetham Memorial Endurance at the end of the year.
