DADIO - a well known early Lotus Elite - raced at Oulton Park, on Saturday, in the hands of Champion Spark Plug's boss Robin Longdon during the Aston Martin Owners meeting.

Some expensive and exciting cars were out on the track, Astons, Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati, to name just a few marques.

Longdon's car looked good out on the Cheshire circuit and, after a dice with a more hairy looking 6.5 litre Allard, the little 1216 cc Lotus broke away to finish fifth behind the bigger engined cars of 3.8 Lister Jags, a Cooper Monaco and the winning Lotus XV of Robert Brooks.

Champion Spark Plugs has just appointed Sam Scullion, plant manager at Upton, in charge of 800 people and reporting to Robin Longdon, Director and General manager Ignitions Product Group.

But, back to racing . . . If you think a Cobra is a snake, a Mustang is a horse, a Sabre is a sword and a Tiger is a big cat, then you would have found all these beasts racing at Oulton. For they are classic sports cars and millions of pounds must have been on the grid.

Warning . . . motor racing can be expensive, especially if you crash.

Practice claimed a James Bond type Aston Martin while another Aston suffered a bad bump during racing.

Oulton's season starts to wind down on October 4, when John Helme, of Noctorum, has to do a Schumacher in a double header race to class win his championship. R.B.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.