Plymouth L.D.O.Y. Round
Page 49
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IN spite of the adverse weather condi' tions, the Plymouth round of the Lorry Driver of the Year Competition attracted a good crowd of spectators, not all of them families of the competitors. This year there was a record number of entries, 117 against last year's total of 96. In general, companies had been limited to no more than three vehicles in each class. This resulted in a good range of sizes, shapes and colours of vehicles, which, from the spectators' point of view, was an attractive feature of the driving tests.
Organization of the round, which was held for the third year in succession at Raglan Barracks, was excellent. The road section and the Highway Code tests were completed in the morning and the three driving tests, which were started at 1 p.m. were completed by all competitors by 5 p.m. Layout of the driving tests provided good facilities for those watching, and a better idea of what the drivers had to do was given by the use of actual kerbstones—loaned by the local authority— instead of marker's as 'simulated kerbs.
No Winner
No outright winner is named at Plymouth, the organizers feeling that unless all class winners re-take the tests in identical vehicles—as at the final of the competition—it would be impossible to find a formula to decide the best driver and that it would be wrong to suggest that the driver with the lowest number of penalty marks (usually a smaller vehicle) was the best.
It was interesting that most of the class winners did .very well on the road and the Highway Code tests, the latter pointing to good preparation. There were a number of clean sheets on each of these two tests, but no driver managed to complete any of the three driving tests free of penalty. Once again, the width-judgment test proved the most troublesome with 46 penalties being the best run.
Winner and runner-up respectively of Class E(l). D. Kinver (Symons Carnal!, Ltd., Guy) at the end of the loading bay test and C. Harrison (S. A. Setter, E.R.F.) just starting.
In Class A, the 1960 result was reversed, with F. G. Taylor (G.P.O., Morris) the winner and A. Couch (Turnbull's Garage, Ltd., Bedford) second. These two drivers have now shared first place in all the five rounds held at Plymouth, A. Couch won in 1957, 1959 and 1960 and F. G. Taylor won in 1958 and was second last year.
Although previous winners gained' places in four of the classes, none of the 1960 winners won this year. R. M. Thorne, driving an A.E.C. for Tate and Lyle, Lid., came near to winning Class 0. for the fourth successive year. After coming through both the road and HighWay Code tests without penalty—the only driver to do so incidentally—and doing well on all three driving tests, he was beaten into second place by A. E. May (Shell-Mex and B.P., Ltd., Leyland), who won the class, mainly due to a remarkably good performance on the kerb parking test. In this he incurred only 23 penalty points amongst the lowest for this test of all the drivers in the round.
The team award was won for the third year in succession by Turnbull's Garage, Ltd., with A. Couch, T. Blackham and L. Whitmore, driving Bedford C.A. vans entered in Class A.