Boyndie Sprint - September 26th
As many of you will know, one of our club members - John Pace - regularly competes throughout the season in the Scottish Sprint and Hillclimb Championship with his MGB GT. As last year, around a dozen members made their way north to The Grampian Kart Club circuit at Boyndie to cheer John on at one of the Championship events.
We started the day at The Drive at Haddo for a breakfast roll and a coffee - this is a motorsport themed café which has really caught the imagination of the petrol heads up here and is always busy - on this particular day there seemed to be a large gathering of Japanese cars.
There are a number of sprint events in the Championship throughout the year; most take place over a weekend with practice and timed runs on both Saturday and Sunday. Luckily, we chose Saturday September 26th which turned out to be a fine sunny day - had we chosen to go on the Sunday, we would have been wet...and cold...and probably miserable! However the sunny weather on Saturday made it a great day of motorsport with some very interesting cars being put through their paces.
John takes up the story of how he got on over the weekend:
Boyndie Sprint 25/26 September 2026
This was my final event of the year and the penultimate round in the Scottish Sprint and Hillclimb Championship. The competition year started at Kames in April with the final event also at Kames in early October. Six locations are used with Golspie at North of Scotland Kart Club track, Boyndie at Grampian Kart Club track, Kames, East Ayrshire, at Muirkirk Motorsport Complex being used for sprint events and for hillclimbs, Fintray, Doune and Forrestburn by Kirk O’Shotts off the M8.
Cars start individually and are timed to the 100th of a second with the best time from all runs counting for placing in class or overall position. The day starts with scrutineering of the car and personal equipment, a drivers briefing, one or two practice runs which are timed but don’t count towards the competition and then a variable number of the event runs but usually three or four depending on time available.
There are various divisions and classes from standard cars, modified, single seat race cars and a hotly contested Mazda MX5 class. My MGB GT is in the Classic and Thoroughbred division which is for cars manufactured before 1980. There is usually a good mix of cars from Anglias, Imps, Minis, Ginettas, Midgets, Sprites, Lotus and this year a 1930’s Lagonda. We are “D” division, class D1 for standard cars, class D2 for modified and class D3 for race cars.
At this event three of us were in the same class on Saturday, a Ford Lotus Cortina, a Porsche 914.4 and my MG. Due to interference with the timing system there was an hour delay in getting the first car to the line but once we were up and running all went well. The first run is a practice which gives you a feel for the track, how grippy it is, or not, the line to take for a corner, gear selection and so on. There was not much grip off the start line but elsewhere it was fine. After the first timed run I was ahead but that didn’t last as the Cortina was soon leading the way and with all the extra power he had it was just about seeing how close I could get to his times. I had the legs on the Porsche and he also developed a misfire partway through his runs. No run is ever perfect and today was no exception but overall I was happy enough with my efforts and the car was going well. On completion of the runs John in the Lotus Cortina was 1st with a 76.66, I was 2nd with a 78.04 and Simon in the Porsche with a 83.31.
On Sunday there was just the two of us entered, John in the Cortina and myself. With my friend John (who joined us for the picnic) in the Lotus 7 in D1 and another John in D3, if your name is John you know what division you are in! With the timing issues more or less resolved running was underway on time with the plan to have as many runs completed before the rains were due to arrive. The practice saw us with a 81.15 for John and a 81.24 for myself and then straight into the timed runs with a 75.24 and a 75.04 for the Cortina after which he stopped for the day. I managed a 79.18 a 77.81 and a 78.80 before we stopped for a quick lunch break. The rains came just as the first of the cars headed out and with a number of people electing not to run my turn came round quite quickly but it was really wet by then so 92.60 was the result. There was only one other car after me running so it was a brief afternoon of motorsport.
However that 77.81 was my best of the weekend and a new PB, by all of 0.05!, so well pleased. When I first did this event in September 2018 my time was 87.87, so I have improved!
It was great having the support from the club on Saturday with an enjoyable picnic lunch and good chat, banter and company. You certainly made your presence felt as a number of people mentioned to me on Sunday how the picnic area looked a good place to be and your enthusiasm in cheering and clapping me on from the grandstand was duly noted. It was great finishing the runs and seeing you all up there, it made my day and I hope I didn’t disappoint. Trust you managed to get the photos you wanted and hope you enjoyed the day.
So that’s it for this season. I hope to back out in 2027, a few things I want to do on the car over the winter but with the price of diesel at present I’ll be using it on the road for a while!
Note: If you head to Facebook and search for 'Sprint and Hillclimb Scotland', you should find a video of the event taken by Richard Broom; this features a couple of clips of John. The link below should work, as long as the video remains on the site.
Many thanks to John Chessor and David and Jane Verity for the photographs.
