Super Peter Collins Celebration at Record Breaking Shelsley Walsh

A large crowd enjoyed the Peter Collins Celebration meeting at ShelsleyWalsh with a wonderful display of runs from the many cars associated with the famous Worcestershire driver of the 1950's as a Supermarine Spitfire gave a spirited aerobatic display overhead.

The main business of the day were the two highly competitive rounds of the MSA British Hillclimb championship with one win a piece to Martin Groves and Scott Moran. Groves again showed his superior knowledge of the 103 year old hill by taking a fantastic 0.13 seconds out of his previous record to leave the time for the most historic track record of them all at a fantastic 22.58seconds.

But later on Groves slithered as he encountered the beginning of the forecast late rain between the esses when all before him had seen a drytrack..

Now trailing runaway leader Scott Moran by 68 points the incident may have finally cost Groves the 2008 championship and the dream of four titles in a row.

Trevor Willis again made the best use of his great skills and low powered but agile OMS to consolidate his third place overall in this years title chase but there were no changes in position anywhere in the top twelve.

Motorsport commentary legend Murray Walker presented the prizes at the end of the stunning event saying

"I made my first ever broadcast from Shelsley Walsh in 1948 and it seems like this friendly wonderful place has hardly changed at all"

Class records also tumbled as Groves lowered the record for unlimited capacity racing cars to 23.15s.

J Andrew Griffiths left the up to 1400cc modified sports car mark at 29.89 in his Caterham Hayabusa, the first sub 30s run for that class.

Adam Steel dropped the up to 600cc racing car record to 29.39s in his tiny short wheel-based Martlet and local driver Peter Cox took the historic pre-1985 racing car record down to 27.43s in his beautiful Chevron B42. 

Steve Lawrence lowered his mark for historic 500cc Formula 3 cars to 37.54s driving his immaculate and rasping Cooper-Jap Mark 8.