Ovaltrack Legends – Birmingham Wheels October 16th 2010
My last outing in the Legend was to be at Birmingham Wheels raceway on a Saturday evening. The day had been preceded by my usual last minute preparations and in true style I arrived at 6.00pm, thoroughly missing the practice which started at 2.30 and the official practice at 5.30pm – why break the habit of a lifetime? It wasn’t too bad actually because it had been raining in the afternoon and the track was still wet when I arrived and was very, very slick so practice would have been pointless anyway.
Out on track in the first heat and I finally got to start from the front – woohoo! The starts are more tricky because the green flag gets dropped whilst still going through turn 4 and getting the power down is seriously tricky and I was sideways most of the way down the straight and had to change gear mid powerslide too! The inside of the track was horrendously slippy and the car understeered all the way to about halfway up the lane. Turns 3 & 4in particular had an oil slick on it and the understeer was absolutely chronic. It soon became apparent that there was only the outside lane to drive and that overtaking would be very tricky. I did make a move down the inside and promptly understeered in to the car on the outside – oops! I did manage to put some good laps together and found some grip and with the inability to overtake I managed to come home in 8th place!
The second race was better but turns 3 & 4 still had a very slick line and it took a few laps to find the grip. I managed to get a good start but there was a yellow flag caution after 3 laps which brought the pack line astern. At the restart I got caught up behind the 75 car on the outside and the whole pack streamed by on the inside and I couldn’t get to the inside to overtake; I literally had to let everyone go past to drop in behind the last car. I managed to gain a few places after I got back up to speed again to salvage 10th.
The feature final was held on a terrible track after the demolition derby boys did themselves proud with oil just about everywhere! I made a reasonable start and got past the 75 car (phew!) up to 5th. After a yellow flag period on lap 3 the fast guys were on my tail and I was soon down in 8th place. There seemed to be incidents going on everywhere and I ended up with more knocks and dings than I had collected all season! Circuit racer Stephen Treherne got past plenty sideways on lap 13 so I gave him room to come past and he promptly slid in to the 365 car right in front of me and I had to anchor up on the straight to avoid a pile up which let several cars past to leave me in 10th. I managed to get past the 57 car to move up to 9th and had a close battle for several laps before contact sent me spinning to the infield and a very close call with the banking. I lost my rhythm and with cars going out left, right and centre I decided to bring the car back in one piece and cruised to the finish. Due to the huge attrition I still managed a respectable 10th and the car still had all four wheels on it – just! It was a hugely frantic race and I felt very lucky to have escaped a lot of close calls without serious damage.
So that’s it for Legends, the car is now back in the safe hands of Racecarsdirect boss Keith Whalley. It’s certainly been an enjoyable experience piloting these rapid cars and it’s something that I would love to do again in the future but only when I have more time to dedicate to the sport to work out how to set them up and get the most out of them.
