National F1 Championhip 2009

Saturdays racing started with F1. The concourse winner was Graham Woodward with this Super Aguri (above). We then swiftly moved into the 3 min qualifying heats. Brian Saunders turned in 27.65 in heat 2 and that stayed top till heat 8 when James Cleave produced 28.44. Those looked like the top 2 times until Paul Shepherd put in a 27.69 in heat 23 and James removed all doubt about top qualifying with 27.91 in the final heat. In the best 2 qualifying format, James was nearly 2 laps clear of Paul and Brian, with Ross Grogan in 4th, the only other driver in the 27s.

That moved us on to the semi finals. The top 2 qualifiers chose the first semi (see photo above) , and after an early challenge from Paul Shepherd, James pulled away to win on 46.62 (just short of 28 pace) with Shep ¾ lap behind and Paul Harwood nearly 2 laps in arrears in 3rd. The second semi was all about Ross Grogan and Brian Saunders, never looking quite on the world champion's pace, but slotting in between Paul and Paul to be fairly confident of a final place. Graham Woodward on the unfancied white lane was 3rd with a 43, and far from confident about making the final Greg Harwood won the third semi, by half a lap from Charlie Gooding. Chris Thomas was in the unlucky 9th place, just failing to catch Woody's time.

Main Grade Final

So we moved to the main grade final. Fastest main grade qualifier was Steve Sargent, followed by Keith Gibson. So it was no surprise when Steve led away from Keith at the start of the 80 lap final. However, Gibbo hit the front on lap 8, Steve. It was lap 32 when Steve was lapped, only for an off on lap 37 to put Steve back on the same lap, and he got the gap down to half a lap in the early 40s. It wasn't till past 50 laps that Keith extended his lead to a lap, and a couple more offs for Steve put the gap to a comfortable 2 laps by lap 57.. That left Steve in second in some danger of being caught by son David who was just over a lap behind. At the end Keith Gibson took the championship by 3 laps with the Sargents 2-3 (dad first) followed by Paul Austin who managed 4th on the rather slow red lane.

	Main Grade F1 final 2009
lane	Black	Purple	Yellow	Blue	Orange	Green	White	Red
driver	Neil Grogan	Dave Austin	Keith Gibson	Steve Sargent	David Sargent	Ian Barker	Dave Harvey	Paul Austin
fastest lap	7.117	6.922	6.542	6.510	6.579	6.586	6.537	7.067
laps	66	71	80	77	76	72	45	73
position	7	6	1	2	3	5	8	4

Keith's winning car

National F1 Championship Final

And now to the big one. Just as in the first semi, after an early challenge from Paul Shepherd, James took the lead on lap 4. But this time was different - an off on lap 10 gave Shep the lead. Mostly the 2 cars were turning similar lap times, but James was having more offs which extended Sheps lead to a full lap on lap 36. Meanwhile Brian Saunders was third having dropped over two laps behind by lap 30 and (as he told me afterwards) not reckoning he had much chance of improving. The final half of the was a continuation of the Shep easing away from James story. but Brian was turning the fastest laps of the race and caught James for second on lap 43 and passed Shep for the lead on lap 59. In the closing laps James car seemed to be slowing, all eyes were on Shep and the fast clsoing Brian. Brian had an off on lap 75 which put him within a second of Shep, but Brian extended that a little to win the championship by just 1.3 seconds. Paul Harwood came home 3rd, and in fact was closing on James at quite a rate by the end.

lane	Black	Purple	Yellow	Blue	Orange	Green	White	Red
driver	Graham Woodward	Charlie Gooding	Ross Grogan	Paul Shepherd	James Cleave	Brian Saunders	Paul Harwood	Greg Harwood
fastest lap	7.229	6.551	6.416	6.164	6.097	6.083	6.597	6.468
lap	48	74	75	79.85	77	80	76	73
pos	8	6	5	2	3	1	4	7

Brian's winning car

2008 Champion Greg Harwood presents the F1 trophy to 2009 Champion Brian Saunders (right) Main Grade Champion Keith Gibson receives his trophy from Sunday's chief race controller Mark Witham

F1 championship 2009
Pos	Driver	Qual best 1	Qual best 2	Main Grade	Semis	Final
1	Brian Saunders	27.65	54.02	-	44.94	80
2	Paul Shepherd	27.69	54.39	-	45.92	79
3	James Cleave	28.44	56.35	-	46.62	77
4	Paul Harwood	25.64	51.15	-	44.05	76
5	Ross Grogan	27.27	53.36	-	45.28	75
6	Charlie Gooding	26.17	52.21	-	43.5	74
7	Greg Harwood	26.39	52.07	-	44.04	73
8	Graham Woodward	25.69	50.48	-	43.43	48
9	Chris Thomas	26.69	53.34	-	43.3
10	Alan Lucas	26.27	51.88	-	42.91
11	Ian Fisher	25.66	50.25	-	42.77
12	Martin Ellis	25.32	49.61	-	42.43
13	Mark Harwood	26.03	51.34	-	42.25
14	David Sargent	25.81	50.93	final	42.24
15	Steve Sargent	26.60	51.64	final	42.23
16	Graeme Stephenson	27.17	52.75	-	39.45
17	Paul Austin	24.43	48.35	final	39.08
18	Keith Gibson	25.56	50.14	final	38.8
19	Dave Coward	24.17	48.05	-	38.7
20	Ian Barker	24.69	49.29	final	37.47
21	David Austin	25.17	48.62	final	35.05
22	Richard Mack	25.17	50.21	-	34.28
23	Neil Grogan	24.16	48.11	final	13
24	Dave Harvey	24.69	49.27	final	9
25	Franz Barillaro	24.27	48.00	9
26	Sandy Parker	24.24	47.93	10
27	Ben Woodward	24.14	47.77	-
28	Brian Church	24.05	47.72	11
29	Vince Lee	24.03	47.71	-
30	Pat Skene	24.04	47.61	12
31	Stephen Siddall	24.03	47.47	13
32	Wink Hackman	23.93	47.13	14
33	Rob Harris	23.43	46.68	15
34	Andy Brown-Searle	23.59	46.14	16
35	Keith Charles	23.57	46.00	17
36	Chris Green	23.24	45.51	18
37	Kev Gray	22.86	45.41	19
38	David Farrow	22.76	45.21	20
39	James Davey	23.01	44.91	21
40	Mike Gibbon	22.57	44.07	22
41	Chris Cowan	22.14	44.06	23
42	Phil Hemsley	21.78	43.47	24
43	Noddy Lockey	21.77	43.34	25
44	Trevor Crout	21.53	42.96	26
45	Tony Ryder	21.42	41.30	27
46	Chris Frost	20.75	41.22	28
47	Matthew Siddall	20.49	39.65	29
48	Stephen George	18.69	37.17	30
49	Keith Edgar	17.44	34.84	31