As I wait for the starter’s flag , I have visions of my XJR  flashing past adoring crowds while overtaking Michael Schumacher on the streets of Monaco.  Further delusions of grandeur swell my chest as I picture my speedometer cable letting go in a frenzy well north of 300 km. / hr. down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.   (Ed note: please see photo at bottom....)

But as I trip the light fantastic ( that is the light beam of the OJOA’s new super accurate electronic timer ) I realize I am at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga. This is my return to competition driving after a mere thirty five year layoff from car rallying and I need to make up for a little bit of lost time. 

I stab the accelerator and a maze of confusing orange pylons rise up to confront me. But I have the navigation wired. My eagle eye sorts out the first lap into it’s correct hourglass pattern , the second lap succumbs to my perfect figure eight , and I blur the third lap which is the oval , each lap faster than the last as my tires warm up. Some creative genius has really thought this challenging three lap course out but it has met it’s match in me !! Surely the best time ever recorded in JCNA is within my grasp.

I am a symphony of fluid motion as I dance between those pylons . I dare not hit a pylon or it will cost me two seconds which I know would be an eternity in this event. I simply must get all three laps completed in under fifty seconds in order to put that boy racer , that poseur , my friend and fellow competitor Steve Gormley in his place. He is in my class , the supercharged class, in another XJR, and he is all that stands between me and my rightful place, immortalized as the class winner in this inaugural OJOA slalom.

I am tempted to accelerate and brake violently but I know that I must stay smooth to shave time . I dare not upset the delicate front / rear traction balance too much as I struggle for that last morsel of adhesion in this understeering beast. I try , but can’t break the rear end loose to counter the understeer at these low speeds. So I must position the machine with precision, striving for the earliest possible application of power on the exit from the gracious curves I am confidently carving between the pylons. The straights are so short I devour them in an instant.

No time to meditate . He who hesitates is lost. Remember the wise advice from mentors Ross and Nelson. Look where you want to go , don’t use the weird angles the car is pointing as your sight line. Thank goodness I followed their advice and pumped the tires to 45 psi. I can still feel them rolling under me. Moments  later I am in the braking box. My glorious run is over. I have four more runs left to further dazzle the spectators.

I am smug in the satisfaction that grace and pace have both prevailed . I have turned 48.808 seconds on dry pavement and it has just started to drizzle. This will make the course even more fun and more challenging. But more important , surely it will doom that wretch Gormley to a slower time than mine.

Gormley’s first efforts are clumsy. Like everyone else he initially has trouble navigating the course and since he repeatedly goes off course his times doesn’t count. Now it has started to rain lightly. Forget about him, victory in class is mine. Now I start thinking about outright victory.

Forget about that nephew of mine in his wimpy Audi Quattro 1.8 . What chance does he have against the might of my three hundred and seventy galloping four legged steeds ? The nerve of the lad, not to mention Ross Hamilton in his anemic Honda Civic. Don’t worry about Nelson Burkhart and those other lost souls , refugees from a bygone performance era , in their prehistoric XKE’s with those wafer thin tires. Sure the XKE is a work of art ;  sure it is featured in an art museum somewhere in New York as an icon. But we’re not in an art museum ; we’re at the Hershey Centre and at this moment in time might is right . The timing clock is blind to style. I will prevail. I fear not even Rob Hutchison’s V 12 XKE.

- - - - Now wait just a second, something is dreadfully wrong. My nephew has shoehorned his tiny Quattro into a forty five point seven second dash . Three seconds faster than my symphony of speed. Ross Hamilton’s Civic is flying around the course in the forty sixes. Nelson has somehow deceived his XKE into beleving it can lap in the forty sevens which it proceeds to do. Ross does likewise in Nelson’s car.
The XJS contingent led by Mike Hutchison is closing in on me in the low fifties and forty nines. Fred Hill and company are sure not behaving like the sedate concours competitors I expected. Jeff Booth folds up the picnic tables in his Vanden Plas and driving like a man possessed enters the forty nines. Rob Lusty takes a rented Pontiac into the forty nines with a lunatic fringe drive. Others are improving their times flirting with the fifty second barrier while my very worn Pirelli P Zeroes protest the wet conditions and take me on a ploughing match into the dreaded forty nines and low fifties. 

And then , horror of horrors, my arch rival Gormley eclipses me by a mere point two of a second to take first in class, my class, the class I owned until he posted a 48.6 with my help as front seat navigator. In the wet no less. My dream world has ended in the blink of an eye. I am not Jacques Villeneuve after all. I am not God’s gift to the slalom course. I am not the egomaniac who wrote the preceding paragraphs. I return to reality. I am just Steve Sherriff , a happy camper who really enjoyed the fun , friendly rivalry , and camaraderie of this inaugural event.

We proved this is a safe fun event which is not hard on the cars .
I look forward to next year and I hope you’ll be there too. It was a real pleasure to serve with that superb organizer Ross Hamilton and the rest of our keenly motivated committee.