With a safe return to the track at the European Finals, the National Finals saw Tim Garlick and team entered back in Super Mod competition once more. It was oh so close to the perfect result too......

"After spending a pretty wet and boring weekend at the Euro Finals, the team couldn't wait to return to the SUMO ranks at the N.Finals last weekend. It was great to see all the regular war horses and smiley riders where still well up for weekends hard racing, and to put on a 7 car field at the end of the year was impressive."

Qualifying. "All we hoped for was a repeat of the safe 8.1 run at the Euros and then we could start to work on the engine,7.94 was good for first round followed by the Night time lap of 7.90, which gave us No.3 spot behind Ellis and Kirk. Safe, but didn't exactly set the world alight!"

Round 1. "This was one of the hardest rounds as the movement through eliminations could end here, knowing that sneaky Rawlings had a tenfold increase in crew including new Driver "The Twig" (I assume some reference to weight difference) and top Tuner " Big Nose Perkins". Is this the round to put the tune up in? I judged not, so we left it alone, only just scraping through with a 7.80 to a 7.82, could have been a whole lot different!"

Round 2. "The conversation with my crew went "Un-likely to get this one as Andy's run a 73, but we need tune up data on the engine, so it would be rude not to try". This will definitely go down in my book as my favourite run. Lining up against Andy thinking all I can do is cut a light I have to say was thrilling, the end result was two cars showing a clean pair of heels and running one of the quickest side by side SUMO races, with my 7.710 to Andy's 7.775. It would also appear this lap went down well with the crowd and pod staff!"

Final "What an end to a crap year, in the final with Ellis! Truth be known I wanted to beat Graham not just for my own personal gain but to lay down the gauntlet for 2006. If you look at our timing tickets for this final round we are matched all the way to the eight but our speed is starting to lay over so this is where we are starting to hurt a piston. Still we now hopefully have enough data to go into 2006 with a more reliable engine."

"On a final note well done everyone for a well represented and presented class, there was a lot of praise heaped on us over the weekend and 2006 can only get better."


WATCH OUT ELLIS

Tim