Duncan and his DAX continue their winning ways
Two major racing events arranged for consecutive weekends conspired to make the end of August a busy time for Duncan Cowper and his DAX Rush MC Hyabusa Turbo.

The first event was Round 4 of Time Attack held at Silverstone on Sunday 20th August. This was the first time that Duncan had been allowed back into Time Attack since the political storm that broke following his commanding overall win in Round 1 at Rockingham, right back at the beginning of the season.

What the organisers had changed for Round 4 was the introduction of a new Open-Wheel category, created especially to cater for cars such as the Rush MC. The quality of the new category’s entrants was high with Duncan’s main competition promising to come from the more powerful the Aerial Atoms.

On paper, the weights of the Atom and Rush MC were almost identical but in supercharged form the Atom had a useful edge on power to the order of 40 bhp or so. Chatter on the Atom Forum in the weeks running up to the event was understandably bullish.

However the real proof of the pudding would be out on the track. Time Attack is a one-shot fastest lap competition and the Supercharged Atom of Andrew Smith set a highly impressive lap at 1 min 3.368 seconds – fast enough in fact to gain Andrew a place in the Time Attack Super Battle final at the end of the day.

Duncan’s DAX answered with a time of 1 min 2.679 seconds. Just 0.689 seconds faster but more than enough to secure his second successive outright Class Win in the Time Attack series. No mean achievement at all but it was a margin over the Atom that Duncan astonishingly nearly trebled (to 1.964 seconds) in the Super Battle with a blistering lap time of just 1 min 1.970 seconds!! Food for thought indeed for the Aerial camp.

The second event for Duncan and his DAX Rush MC was the Car Tuner Sports Car Grand Prix held at Snetterton on Sunday 27th August.

Here again the competition was all about achieving the fastest lap but unlike Time Attack the event was run on an open pit lane format with available session time being the only limit to the number of laps each driver could put in during the day

Duncan soon found himself locked in a battle for first place with the Auto Teknix Elises – each powered by an Audi 1.8 litre turbo engine producing something in excess of 300bhp.

The Auto Teknix Elises had been returning times of 1 min 15 seconds to 1 min 16 seconds when Duncan’s DAX suddenly found a clear run of the track and put in a stunning lap time of just 1 min 14.61 seconds!

But sadly things soon took a turn for the worse for Duncan and concerns about his Hyabusa engine led him to withdraw the DAX after just 11 laps.

At the break for lunch Duncan and the DAX were still heading the leader board but the Auto Teknix cars were slowly improving their times and eventually in the afternoon session, driver Steve Gugliami achieved a cracking run of 1 min 14.42 seconds to take the Sports Car Class and Overall titles.

“It was all so incredibly frustrating,” said Duncan, “but that’s motor racing! In the end my best time was beaten by just 0.19 seconds and I have to admire Steve and the impressive form he showed in the Elise.”

“However if it hadn’t had to withdraw, I feel sure I would have brought the DAX down into the 1 min 12 seconds bracket by the end of the day – and that really would have raised a few eyebrows!! Roll on next year!”