What a week of Speedhunting! Hello all, I'm Jody Forte. I'm a photographer and car enthusiast from the little island of Barbados. This past weekend, we hosted the second round of the Caribbean Motor Racing Championship (CMRC) at our local race circuit Bushy Par. What a weekend it was! Quite a few overseas competitors came in for this event and not just from other competing Caribbean countries like Jamaica and Guyana. We also had some racers from Europe join the party! My wife, Seema Forte, and I shoot a lot of local motorsports events here and we figured this event was a good opportunity to start to show more of whats happening here on this little island to the world. What better place than on Speedhunters! Here are some of the shots from practice sessions, qualifying and race day. Lets get right into it...
This guy had a good weekend! Steve King in his R33 Skyline had the fans in an uproar. Although he only won one race of three, he gave it his all and this car was blazing fast...
King won by a mile...
King fights his way back for the lead after getting run off the track and he literally came from the back of the pack! St. Elmo isn't about to let him take back first place so easily!
Group 3C was a mix up of turbocharged animals, and NA beasts!
The last two races in group 3C saw a serious dog fight between local favourite St. Elmo and this Vauxhaul powered Audi from England.
A wolf in sheep's clothing. This Audi TT is mostly a tubed frame silhouette car powered by a 2.0L Vauxhall. It was quite impressive.
He managed to take a win by days end....
This is the ex-AMS TA1 time attack car which David Summerbell bought a few years back to campaign in Jamaica. A previous CMRC champion, it's a beast of a car. Many waited anxiously to see if it was enough to deal with the contenders from Barbados who had upset the apple cart at the last round of the CMRC in Guyana last year.
Summerbell streams down the stretch!
Who doesn't love a good Cossie? This Escort from England was quite the sight....
One of the English competitors Adrian Beer in his Rover v8 powered MGB GT. Quite a beautiful car.
A serious stack of ITBs feed air to the 4.1L rover powering the MGB.
It really is majestic in action....
Even when the rain hit during practice, these guys were still driving all out. Some of the local old school RWD just couldn't help but to get sideways! :)
This car, heck, this guy is crazy... but more on that in a bit.
This Turbo Mitsubishi Colt was among some of local cars practicing during the week.
Kenrick 'Snapper' Husbands in his infamous KP61, powered by a high revving 4age. He is a seasoned local driver and a regular class winner.
He found himself in a serious dog fight for pole position with another great local driver, Edward Corbin.
Young Harewood in his KP61 won every race in his class.
Jason Parkinson in his Datsun.
Jamal 'Kirby' Brathwaite put in a hell of a drive on race day!
The first race meet for Jones in his F20c powered ae86 unfortunately went sour when his AE86 was t-boned.
This was the man to watch: local favourite, Roger Mayers. He and his brother, Barry Mayers, have seen the top of both rally and track racing in Barbados over the years. They both only entered the CMRC for the first time last year and only missed round one in Jamaica. Roger didn't finish last year's round in Barbados due to an accident with another driver. But when he finally raced in Guyana the car dominated --simply dominated. It set a new record and all. It currently holds the lap record at Bushy Park and that did not change this Sunday as this car was leaps and bounds ahead of everything on the track.
After one lap, he had an uncanny amount of distance from the competition
Although only finishing one race of three he finished on the podium, quite a victory! Dare, I say, the fastest circuit car in the Caribbean!!
Barry's "Suzuki SX-4." Its actually a re-shelled Renault Megane Trophy silhouette car powered by a 2.5 Renault V6. An engineers wet dream!
In a acceleration battle with the TA1.
Leading the pack....
Barry would go on to win race two and three of the CMRC. What a day for M&M racing!
Mark Maloney in the Rotary rocket....
This triple Rotor Mazda Rx3 is a precise and angry beast of a track car, a local favourite.
The car is astonishing in person. It has ridiculous build quality. Its a showroom classic.
Daddy Doug Maloney's ex BTCC Audi is a sleeping giant
Back in Barbados for first time in a while, with a new triple rotor powered full carbon Rx8 silhouette car, was Mark Vieira. Unfortunately, the car didn't make it to race Sunday, which was a disappointment for many...
Doug Gore in the next 4WD Evo entry from Jamaica.
The tubed frame RX-7 of Guyana's Andrew King is an amazing piece of home built engineering. This car handles very well. He fought for second place in the various rounds and bested the times of any other overseas competitor --including the TA1.
The familiar looking Evo of Guyana's Kevin Jeffrey while fast, was not up to the speed of the cars at the front of the grid...
The CMRC race had more cars than ever before on the grid!
THIS guy...
...and this car, made our weekend...
This J's Racing CRX, campaigned by Irish J's Racing dealer Tuning Factory, and driven by Barry Rabbitt, was just a sight both in the pits and on the track.
Its so simple, so clean, sooooo Japanese. It just goes, stops and turns. I had high hopes for this car watching it practice and NO ONE was disappointed come race day!
He spent most of the day battling local E30 racer Justin Campbell
Round one saw this incident which put the CRX put of fight for pole position...
...and Campbell taking the win!
But with race two, the CRX had to start further back and he fought his way to second place rather quickly where the battle started again.
Rabbitt managed to nab a spectacular pass on the E30 followed by a win, which made the crowd wild with excitement!
Kevin Graham of Guyana was quite the rider in the Bike Category.
He was fast --really fast!
He took podium in all the Bike races for the day.
Another Barbadian rider.
This rider had quite the spill at qualifying.
Sammy finishing off the day with a gross display of power :)
...and that's it!
Thanks for reading/browsing through our guest blog! More of the action can be seen at our Flickrs here and here!
-Jody Forte