Paul Rose Takes the Dave Simpson Trophy for Third Time

The Dave Simpson Memorial Trophy is, after the overall Championship award, undoubtedly the most prized trophy within the BARC (NW) Sports/Saloon Championship. It was donated to the Centre by Dave Simpson’s widow, Margaret, in recognition of Dave’s contribution in setting up the Championship with current co-ordinator, John Leck and then Centre Chair, Ken Mitchell. It is competed for at the mid-season Oulton Park championship round each season with the first recipient being Neil Jackson in 1993.

The recipient is the Class winner whose average race speed has the greatest gap to the average race speed of the driver coming second. This allows the award to be won by someone from any of the classes with at least three starters, this makes it so popular as it can be won from any class, and has been over the years.

This year the trophy was fought over in the first CNC Heads Sports/Saloon race, luckily not the second which was red-flagged after less than a lap. It soon became apparent as the race progressed that classes B, C & E were far too tightly contested for their respective winners to be in with a chance of taking the award and with Class F only having 2 starters, the remaining classes A & D were front runners. In the final analysis Paul Rose was on average 6.63mph faster than Dave Clark who finished second to Paul in Class A. However, with Oliver Thomas being ‘only’ 5.18mph faster than second place Ric Walker in Class D the award went, for the third time to Paul Rose in his Saker S1-500. Paul joins Dennis Crompton in taking a hat trick of wins.