JEC Powered by Jaguar Championship - Silverstone 1^st April 2006:

Welcome everyone, to the start of the 2006 Jaguar racing season here at Silverstone on a wet and windy, but later dry and windy day in Northampton.

The first race of the day was the 'Powered by Jaguar' event that had 13 participants. With a rain soaked track at 9 a.m in the morning for qualifying and a dry track in the afternoon for racing you can bet your bottom dollar that today all Jags were going to be tested to the limit on an April Fools Day. And by golly they were, with more spins than a Shane Warne attack on the England Cricket team. In the morning it was the bend at Brooklands that caught the Jags out, but in the afternoon it was Becketts that did the most damage when on the first lap of the race a group of cars touch and the red flags were waved and the race was stopped. the result of this incident was the loss of 4 cars for the restart, these included Lawrence Coppock, William Lynch, Chris Palmer and Zoe North.

When the race resumed pole position Steve Davis in his 6 litre XJS shot away with James Dodd in his D-Type snapping at his heels. There was nothing between them until lap 9 where into Brooklands Davis was outbraked by Dodd and then came out of Luffield ahead of Steve. James maintained his lead going on to take Class B and race win with Davis making a valiant effortto try and get his place back but settled for 2nd place and Class E win.

Robin North in his yellow 6 litre XJS took 3rd as he fought the challenge of Kevin (hannibal) Doyle who was losing gears all over the place in his black XJ12 coupe but managed to bring his car home in 4th place.

David Weaver was in the Jaguar Monthly XJS, that was driven by Gary Davis last season. Weaver started at the back of the grid and during the race was working his way through the field until lap 7 where he had a massive spin at Brooklands thus dropping a couple of places. When Weaver straightened up again he then chased Dave Ball who did a brilliant job of keeping Weaver at bayand keep ahead of him across the line.

Report by STEVE GOREY (JEC)