Text: Dean Corrodus
Photos: Shane Munroe
The 5th sprint in the Jamaica Millennium Motoring Club’s six event National Sprint championship for 2007 took place at the Badda Badda Raceway on Sunday, October 7th, and defied the odds of being washed out as the inclement weather affecting almost the entire island decided to give the competitors in the Castrol sprint a break, holding out till the last three cars were on the track before the heavens finally opened up, sending a deluge to the garden parish track.
Moodie and Jadusingh.
It was an incident filled day, as the winners took second place billing to those who had major incidents of the rolling over kind, as a total of three top class competitors went upside down at three different corners on the day. This was attributed to the high levels of grip that the track had, as instead of the rear of the car sliding as is customary on a loose dirt surface, the rains from the day before served to compact the old cane-field dirt into hard clumps, which gave extremely high levels of traction and caused some cars to become unstable when sliding sideways, and others to flip over. Jordan Powell was the first to show his car’s underbelly in the Jamspeed Adrenalin Rush TV/b mobile Toyota Starlet in a medium speed corner on the 2nd run, then he was followed by Peter Moodie Jr. in his NG Racing prepared Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 6 on the fastest sweeping corner of the track (the car is still for sale, now at a significantly reduced cost, best suited as a donor car for a race car buildup), then Raj Jadusingh gave a peek at the beautifully prepared undercarriage of the Hilton Kingston /Digicel /Cooyah/Global Courier Services Honda Civic, performing a slow roll at the slowest hairpin corner of the track. All three walked away unharmed, with Powell placing third in class despite his misfortunes and posting that time after the roll, Moodie finishing second in class, although his car was significantly damaged and he was unable to continue, and Jadusingh actually winning his class, as his times were simply unmatchable all day by any other 2 wheel drive competitor, being 7 ½ seconds faster than the next competitor Pernell Fitz-Coy, who won the JA2 class, and giving some 4 wheel drive cars a scare in the process! He ended up winning both the JA3 class and the trophy for the fastest 2wd car as well.
Thus Douglas Gore’s 1st run of 2.23.33 was to go unchallenged all day, and he opted not to contest the second and third runs, but came out again to win the championship run despite the advent of the aforementioned deluge midway through his run. Peter Moodie Jr. was second in this JA8 class with brother Garth who was sharing his car third.
First in the JN8 class was Dave Lee in the Shell V Power fueled Spot Valley Complex Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 8, with class honors in the JA4 class going to Thomas Hall (Toyota Starlet Gt turbo), with Martin Anderson second in an old school rear wheel drive Mitsubishi Lancer. Jadusingh won the JA3 class with David Anderson who shared his car second and Keith Saunders (Chevrolet Chevette) third.
The closest battle of the day was for JA2 class honors, as Pernell Fitz-Coy (Toyota Corolla FX) posted a best time of 2.38.42 to beat James March 2.38.43 in a similar car by the narrowest of margins, one hundredth of a second! Third in class was Powell, 5 seconds adrift in his damaged car. The JC1 class had its two entrants separated by a whopping 14 seconds, as Ian Edwards shared his Mazda 323 with Kevin Noteman and gave the first timer a lesson in sprint racing.
The next event on the motorsports calendar will be the Jamaica Race Drivers Club/Cable & Wireless Heroes of Speed race meet at Dover Raceway on Monday, October 15, with gates opening at 8 am.
