Fort Dunlop for Contest Final
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THE final of the Lorry Driver of the Year Competition will be held at Fort Dunlop, Birmingham, on September 18. This was agreed last week by the national executive committee of competition.
Apart from the Weyinouth round. which is to be held on April 23, the Birmingham contest will take place on May 22, the Manchester round on July 10 (subject to confirmation). and the Leeds and Coventry contests in June. Other dates have yet to be fixed. It is possible that new centres will be inaugurated at Blackpool, Liverpool and Stepney.
The executive committee decided not to adopt the suggestion that in the final the Lorry Driver of the Year should be established by an index of performance. Instead, they agreed to preserve the present system, under which the supreme title holder is found by competition between the class champions.
In eliminating rounds, the time element is to be abolished, even for the purpose of deciding ties. Instead, a maximum reasonable time will be placed on each test, and anyone who exceeds it will lose 100 marks. In the event of a tie, the performance on the road section will in the first instance be used to decide the winner. If a tie still results. the performance in the three manreuvrability tests will be taken into account.
In last year's final the team award was withheld because of a protest against the method of computation. A new systein has been devised in which the class placings of each team (all the competitors from each centre are regarded as constituting a team) are divided by the number of entries in each class. The executive committee decided that this was fair, and that last year's team prize would go to Weymouth.
Weymouth was, in fact, the winner under the previous system of calculation. The new method, however, made material differences to the positions of other centres in the team contest.
The Commercial Motor was informed on Monday that the Oxford round would be held at the premises of S. Sinith and Sons (England), Ltd., Witney, Oxon, on July 17. Entrants will leave Oxford at 9 a.m. on the road test to Witney. There will be. an optional maintenance contest organized by the Traders Road Transport Association. Entries should be sent to Mr. H. J. Walt City of Oxford Road Safety Organization, Town Hall, Oxford, by July 1.