Qualifying
After clearing the snow off the car before setting off for Thruxton, I was glad to see that there wasn’t any of the white stuff at the circuit! It was however very wet but by the time our qualifying session was ready to go out it had stopped raining although the circuit was still wet.
As expected, the circuit was slippery in places and I thought it would be best to have a steady 3 laps to ensure I qualified for the race and then start to push for a quick lap. The car felt quite good in the slippery conditions but I couldn’t lean on the tyres enough to know how the set-up would work if it was dry for the race. It would have been nice to get to know the car a bit more on this unfamiliar circuit but I knew there was more time to be gained in these conditions from the driver than the car.
The traffic was heavy and I wasn’t able to get a decent lap in the whole session so on the final lap I pushed for a quick time but then came across a painfully slow car at the chicane which forced me to almost stop but I still set my fastest time so it could have been a lot quicker. 8th on the grid wasn’t the best I could manage but at least the car was in one piece!
Race
After qualifying I decided to take a gamble on the set-up of the car for the race by changing the jetting, camber, toe-in, tyre pressures, rear shock settings and pretty much anything else I could find to play with. On race day I fired the car up in the paddock but I struggled to get the car to idle, anything below 4k and it would die. It could have been dirt in the carb, a cold engine, or just that the jets that had been changed. I didn’t have time to remove the bodywork and start checking things so I crossed my fingers that it would clear.
Upon leaving the paddock I couldn’t get first gear, the same thing had happened before qualifying but I thought I had sorted it, and I had to get to the assembly area using second gear. In the assembly area it took about 10 attempts to find first gear but I didn’t feel confident about getting it back in first again on the grid.
Sure enough I couldn’t get first gear so I had to try and pull away in second gear. The combination of a sickly engine and second gear start led to a stalled engine….not good. I managed to get going again but by now I was right at the back with the slower cars. I managed to pick a few off on the straights in the first lap and then I met a slow car in the middle of the complex and had to back off which spun me round and..I was right at the back of the pack again!
Once I’d managed to get going again it was a case of working my way back through the field. I managed to get to Paul Taylor’s red AHS car in 12th and we traded places for the rest of the race which was fun but I couldn’t get the pace out of my car that I would have needed to be up in the top 6 anyway. The rear was just too loose to really push hard which is exactly how this track needs to be driven. It was another disappointing result and I have yet another list of things that need doing on the car before the next meeting at Brands Hatch. No rest for the wicked!
