The 500 Owners Association brought both cars and motorcycles together for their annual meeting at Wiscombe Park last weekend.

It was the motorcycle division which brought success for the motorcycling Short family. Brothers Mark and Peter, riding Aprilia and KTM machines respectively secured third and fourth places in the 501-750 cc class having been beaten to second place by KTM SMR rider Paul Jeffery. Peter, from Bideford, on his 673 cc machine took the final podium position with a climb of 43.28 seconds whilst his brother, who resides in Brampford Speke near Exeter, clocked 44.03 seconds on his 550 cc SXV.

Family honour was however upheld by Tom Short (Mark’s son) with a class winning time of 41.56 with his KTM SM.

In the car classes James Hudson from Ottery St Mary took his Volkswagen Gold GTi up against the turbo-charged and four wheel drive Mitsubishi Evo 6 of the Harding brothers, George and Oscar.

The Tipton Garage technician used his skill, plus the familiarity of his home track, to split the drivers of the Japanese machine to secure second place in the Road Going Saloons and Sports Car category. Hudson’s fastest climb of 46.09 seconds came on his second climb and was 2.15 seconds in arrears of victor Oscar Harding’s winning time and just over half a second up on that of George.

Olivia and Liam Cooper fought for the honours in the up to 1300 cc Sports and Racing Car Class in their 998 cc Force HC single-seater. The battle waged by the Exeter duo took them clear of third place finisher John Bunting in his Jedi with Olivia claiming the win on a fastest climb up the testing 915 metre course of 40.59 seconds.

This coming weekend (May 13 and 14) sees two regional championship events at Wiscombe Park which will cater for a wide variety of machinery including road-going and modified saloons and sports cars, sports racers and single-seaters with additional classes for Minis, rally cars, TVR, MG as well as cars of the Classic Marques Speed Championship. The festival of motor sport will also feature over forty motorcycles, both solos and sidecars.