Man in Black impresses at Pageant of Power

Truck racing champion, Dave Jenkins, was the flag bearer for his sport last weekend showing a clean set of tyres to a number of high performance vehicles at the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power.

The prestigious annual event is a combination of a sprint and hill climb with a wide variety of high performance cars and motorbikes old and new taking part.

The MAN in Black and Jenkins Motorsport Team were invited along to represent one of their principal sponsors, Morris Lubricants, who are also one of the sponsors for the Pageant.

Driver Dave Jenkins, currently lying second in the British Truck Racing Championships, was keen to pit himself against some really quick competition and to showcase his own sport of truck racing.

Although placed in the “Wacky cars “ category Dave and the team soon showed what truck racing is all about consistently hitting 100 mph on the straight and constantly reducing their lap times. On their final run the truck had a broken rear differential and although that compromised the acceleration Dave found it improved the handling in the corners and at lower speeds. He quickly took advantage of that to post his lowest lap time of the weekend at 77 seconds for the 1.2 mile course.

Dave said: “It was great fun to try out the truck in a different type of event. We didn’t set out to break any records but I was really pleased with our performance over the course of the three days. Hopefully, we’ve encouraged some more motorsport fans to come and see what truck racing is all about.

“It was also great to race against some of the sports cars that were taking part. Who’d have bet an MAN could go quicker over the course than an Aston Martin DBS or a Lotus Elan?”

Maybe next year, instead of ‘Wacky Races’, we can have a separate category for racing trucks and can be included in the main competition.”

At the end of the three day event MAN in Black was in 71^st place out of 129 competitors.

Andrew Goddard of Morris Lubricants said: “We’re delighted to be one of Dave’s sponsors this season and he did a terrific job to champion truck racing at this event showing how impressive the performance of these vehicles can be .”