Chairman’s Rubbish – October 2020

With nothing really happening motorsport wise it is getting harder for me to think of things to say. Unfortunately we had to cancel September 12 car. Graeme had done a lot of work on the event including making sure the necessary changes were made to regs etc. to comply with the Motorsport UK Covid – 19 rules and guidance but problems with the start venue and also lack of entries made it impractical to put the event on.
Following discussions amongst committee and also the Wiltshire RLO ( our very own JR ) Janet & I decided that there was no option but to postpone the Driveshaft until next year. The start venue withdrew their permission as soon as the 6 person rule came into force. There are exceptions to this where groups can be larger than 6 people . These include :- organised sport when licenced – which is what a permit is as Motorsport UK are the governing body authorised by the government and had issued a permit subject to us following the Covid guidance that they had issued. I found another start venue BUT we still had about 20 houses to letter drop and 1 beside a stop junction to visit. Over the past 3 years we have been past nearly all of these houses so both myself & JR did not foresee a problem in normal circumstances however with the possibility of some of them self isolating they might have had a different attitude – just look at this weeks Wiltshire Times! You are not supposed to PR until the route had been authourised which I was still waiting to come through despite the fact that Motorsport UK had had the route at the end of June and they had agreed that 150 miles was OK for a 20/20. Most of the competitors have told us to keep some or all of the entry fee for when it does run and 1 crew has told us to donate it to Wiltshire Air Ambulance which is great. Thanks to all of you who said that you would marshal, to Steve Bailey & Amy Fletcher for checking handouts, to Chris Foxley & Graeme Williamson for agreeing to put out and then collect lots of boards and of course Roger Fletcher for yet again taking on the dubious honour of being Chief Marshal. Janet must also be thanked for doing entries secretary as this year everything had to be done in advance, entry forms had to be complete and fully filled in as everything had to be electronic – the number of times she had to e-mail people asking for next of kin etc. – only 2 forms were complete first time and then to cap it all to sort out refunds! As soon as we have a new date Roger will be back in contact.
Club nights have had to revert back to zoom meetings because of the 6 person rule and we don’t yet know quite how the AGM in December will work. Despite having nothing to say I have still managed to fill half a page!