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It was a dry and overcast morning when Simon and I set off in my MGF to drive to the Autottest site, the field opposite Claverham Court Farm.

Dave Mothersdill (DM) had set the 4 tests up on Friday morning before it started to rain, so all I had to do was get Simon to organise the competitors and marshals to sign on.  I had obtained permits for an Autotest and a Production car Autotest, we had 12 competitors sign on, 7 doing the Autotest with no passengers and 5 doing the Production Car Autotest, in which a passenger is compulsory.

It was lovely to have Dave Coppock’s (the person for whom this event was a memorial) daughter Emma Gofton and his grandchildren, Megan and Matthew Gotfon in attendance along with Megan’s partner Cameron Cleaton.
Megan signed on as a marshal, and Emma, Mathew and Cameron signed on as competitors.  DC’s MG TC is now with Emma in Reading and she though it too far to drive, so she used her BMW Mini John Cooper Works, although she did have her dad’s trademark Union Flag (always flying at the rear of the TC) tied to the spoiler of her Mini.

 At the start of the event DM said a few words about DC (too many Daves!).  DM mentioned that DC joined the MGCC in the SE Centre and organised the Fleet Autotest.  When he moved to Bristol, he joined the SW Centre committee and set about organising Centre treasure hunts, in and around Cheddar Gorge and Auto Gymkhanas.  When the MSA rules for these events started getting increasingly onerous, DC started to organise the Autotest on Grass we have today at Claverham as we had lost the Pagans Hill venue we used to use.  It is thanks to DC that we have a good relationship with George Atwell the farmer who owns this field and the field at Dundry where we have our car trial in October.

I have since received the following from Emma (who also baked us a cake which was DCs favourite, Chocolate and marmalde) “Thank you so much to all the lovely members who came to the Dave Coppock Memorial Autotest yesterday. We had a fantastic day with you all, you made us so welcome and organised & took part in a great event. Dad would have been quite embarrassed that you named the test after him, but very thrilled! Thank you! Emma”

After the compulsory drivers briefing; four tests, four attempts, best three attempts to score.  A ‘Wrong Test’ would incur a penalty of the fastest time for that test plus twenty seconds.  A hit cone or not ‘Stopping Astride’ the finish would incur a five second penalty.  We were allowed to start at any test but advised completing all four tests before attempting to go again.

I decided to start at test 1 the long test, just follow the cones, then test 2, ever increasing circles, then test 3, DCs initials, cones laid out to drive first a D shape then after rounding a single cone a C Shape and then finish.  Test four was a clover leaf, with four cones in a square pattern in the centre, and 4 cones at the outside corners.  A fifth cone had to be rounded just before the finish.

At first the grass still had some dampness and the MGF with all the weight in the middle can be very tail happy.  On most of the test I started in first and quickly got into second as I feel that gives me more control and less wheelspin.  I managed to clip the base of a cone on my first run and was quite slow anyway due to the low traction.  As the morning progressed, the filed dried and the times came down to a reasonable level.

The final results were calculated by Simon and delivered just after lunch.  A summary of the results are shown below: –

The full results list is available at the following link DCMAT Full Results and some photos of the event are displayed below.

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