Monte Cadwell

(I was gonna go with The Full Monte, but let's face it, Monte Cadwell is way better!)

Brace yourselves, my dear Lancisti, the Hunter was out all day at the Classic Sports Car Club's Meeting at Cadwell Park getting herself over 300 pictures and a massive headache just so she could get a few decent snaps! It didn't help that the weather was going from one extreme to another, first boiling hot and heavy rain the next minute. Still, I did come back with a treat for you, so keep scrolling.

Before I start my story, I have to show off tell you that I got myself a mean-looking monster camera just to cover this event (it still pales in comparison to those "telescopes" that some guys turned up with!), so hopefully you'll notice that the picture quality has improved. Well, I can tell that it has improved, because it couldn't have gotten any worse!

Now, the story. I don't usually get to write a lot, but this time was slightly different. As you knew (from my previous posts), Geoff Ward was going to race at Cadwell Park today in his little Monte and I was not the one to miss such an opportunity. I do love Cadwell Park with all my heart, it's one tricky circuit that has everything you could wish for: the hills, the straight lines, the crazy corners... Perfection!

Luckily for me, I was with my friend who is a Lancia enthusiast himself and who is (also, luckily) a bit more talkative than me. I mean, you'd expect me to be a little chatterbox, being a girl and all, but in reality, I can be quiet shy and have trouble approaching people I don't know. But when we've spotted the Monte, we thought we'd come and say hi. I'm glad we did, because Geoff turned out to be a really nice guy and he didn't mind that was taking tons and tons of pictures of his car from all possible angles.

Speaking of the technical stuff, the engine was Guy Croft stage 2; I think Geoff said that he's done 8000 miles in total so far. Hopefully he will be progressing to a Stage 3 in the future (which sounds like an awesome plan to me!)

 

It was a totally new experience for Geoff as he had never raced at Cadwell before. I asked him if he was going to win and he just laughed. "Not a chance!" he said, "not with those  cars in the line up!" Fair enough, there was an Esprit, two crazy Porsches and two MR2s. Although technically, Geoff did win in his own class. It was a wet forty minute race and the track was quite slippery. In fact, slippery enough for that Esprit to spin off and a Porsche to come off the track completely. Yet Geoff has managed to have a decent race all the way through and even gain 9 seconds between 2 laps! Yes, I did have my stopwatch on, I'm sad, I know, but how impressive was that? Just for the record, the last Lancia I saw racing at Cadwell was a Fulvia and it didn't even complete the race...

Well done to Geoff and Rosso Vivo! Hopefully, by the time I've posted this, their yellow novice sticker will have been peeled off and gone for good!

P.S. Click HERE to go to Rosso Vivo Racing website! And click HERE for the Classic Sports Car Club info and calendar!