With very changeable weather conditions, we had a day of drama when the BRSCC’s North Western Centre organised its first meeting of 2026 at Oulton Park on 11th April.
Classic Mini Racing
It was the debut event for the new for 2026 Classic Mini Racing Championship – for post 1976 Minis powered by the famous 1275cc engine. When the lights went out for their first race, Chris Morgan weaved between the front row starters – David Kirkpatrick and Kelvin Fletcher – to take the lead.
At the end of the opening lap, Morgan had a clear advantage over Neven Kirkpatrick and Fletcher. Initially, the latter pair tried to work together to try to catch Morgan but when they realised this wasn’t going to be possible, they started battling between themselves. N. Kirkpatrick came out on top as Fletcher selected second instead of fourth gear on a few occasions coming out of Cascades.
After his poor start to the opening encounter, in which he finished fifth, David Kirkpatrick battled for the win with his brother, Neven, when the Minis returned to the tarmac. Chris Morgan caught the battling siblings but couldn’t find a way past and had to settle for third.
Kelvin Fletcher came through to take fourth from a grid that had seen the Top Ten reversed. He had earlier told the interviewer on the BRSCC live stream: “The last time I was racing it was in the GTs but these Minis are just as much fun. Sideways at every corner – it’s like The Italian Job!”
MG Cockshoot Cup & Hickford Construction Ltd MG Metro Cup
A wet qualifying session for the MG Cockshoot Cup favoured the front-wheel-drive cars of David Coulthard (ZR) and Karl Green (ZS) who topped the timesheets. However, in the pair of dry races, they couldn’t keep pace with the rear-wheel-drive sportscars of Christopher Greenbank (MGF) and Keith Egar (Midget). The first 4 in the final classification were the same at the end of both events – Greenbank, Egar, Green (with a braking issue in race 1) and Coulthard.
The Hickford Construction Ltd MG Metro Cup ran concurrently with the Cockshoot runners. They had a frantic opening lap to their first outing which featured Mark Wilson executing a demon late-braking manoeuvre which saw him leap from fourth to first. It didn’t take long, however, for reigning champion Jack Ashton to move ahead to take the spoils from Matthew Simpson and Wilson.
Simpson had changed his gearbox after qualifying and, in his haste to get to the Assembly Area for the race, he forgot his fireproof gloves. The time it took to retrieve them meant he had to start from the pit-lane.
For race 2, Simpson took his place on the grid and looked to be on course for victory when Ashton spun on oil at Druids. Ashton recovered to win by just 0.18 secs behind.
Fun Cup
The 25th season of Fun Cup got underway in fine style with a healthy grid of 28 cars and many newcomers including a second car for Rob Boston Racing which was leading at one point. They finished sixth following a couple of stop-go penalties late in the contest.
After a thrilling 4 hours with many changes in both the leading positions and the weather conditions, Team GRD started the defence of their 2025 title with a win ahead of UVio/Hoffmann’s and Vape Club with EDF.
Modified Fords
James Allen took the spoils in his Ford Focus on the two occasions that the Modified Fords took to the tarmac… but he didn’t have things all his own way. In race 1, he ran third behind Andy Robinson’s Falcon and Piers Grange in a Mk2 Escort. However, Robinson retired with a hub failure and then Grange pulled out of the contest with a sick sounding engine.
Robinson and Grange non-started later in the day but Allen was briefly pushed down to second by Todd Garner’s Focus on lap 2. Allen dived back into the lead at Hislops and pulled away. In the closing stages, with his tyres overheating, Garner was overtaken by Paul Nevill (Mk2 Escort).
Thank you – Marshals!
We had 216 volunteer marshals and officials turn out for our season opener, including 18 for their first day as marshals. That’s an incredible number!
There was some great racing… and some great marshalling which was all undertaken with smiles despite the weather!
Dave Williams