I had to repair some of the damaged parts of the good bodyshell to take moulds from it to repair the damaged body. The magnitude of what I was going to have to do became very daunting, and I was only playing with simple jobs. The rusty chassis still hadn't even been stripped.
Most of my time was spent trying to get the green SE5 to keep up with Alan, Paul and Mick in the sprint championship.
Things crystallized after a catastrophic day at Wiscombe when I slid the SE5 off in the Esses trying to get within 10 seconds of the bogey time set by a two-litre Westfield, and uprooted a tree-stump. The car was patched up in the paddock for a second ( very slow ) timed run and nursed home.
It was further patched up to do the next two Scimitar championship meetings at Cornbury and Loton, but I realized I could not continue to run a sprint car and rebuild the Sabres, and retired hurt.
Looking back, however, it was a sensible thing to do. Firstly, it did galvanize me into finishing the Sabre, and secondly, it opened the way to a whole new area of motorsport, where I found success was not directly related to money, and the car could be kept in road-going condition. Equally important, there was no more dressing up in fire-proof overalls and helmet, or standing around disconsolately in rain-swept paddocks.
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