So, after the first race I was set to start the second. I didn’t really have anything to do with my car although Colin needed a bit of support as he was pretty hacked off about the attack of Mondeo man.
On the grid I was right behind Colin who was behind the Mondeo. Unfortunately, Chris Allanson pulled off on the green flag lap. There was clearly something wrong with his car but I didn’t manage to catch up with him to find out what it was.
I got a decent start and was right up behind Colin. There were then a few laps when I was right with him but couldn’t manage to put any sort of run together. After that I just sort of dropped back slowly. As usual, my FL was on an earlier lap, lap 2 in this case. However, it was faster than I’d ever been before at 1:16.4. The problem is, Colin was just a tenth or two faster and he just pulled away slowly from me.
I keep wondering what’s going on here. The most obvious explanation is that I’m just too heavy, that car’s about 35kg over the weight limit and I think Colin’s is about 10kg over. That 25kg just seems to have a continuous and small effect. If I could just manage to lose some weight (and the driver is the obvious place to lose it) then I’m sure it’d make a decent difference over time. It’s very hard though.
So, I finished in 5th place which was pretty good really. And so to bed…
The next day, Sunday, was interesting because we were racing on the International circuit. This picture here is the data logger’s diagram of the circuit. As oyu can see it’s like the Coastal circuit, albeit with an extra bit tacked on consisting of two straights and a hairpin. From walking the circuit, and watching the Graduates qualify, it looked pretty good. The two corners into and out of the new section looked pretty difficult and the hairpin seemed quite good too.
So, Colin and I again got ourselves at the front of the queue and we charged off. Of course, with this layout being rather longer we got fewer laps for qualifying which made life difficult as we were learning the new corners with only a few attempts. However, I was quite pleased with the 1:39.76 that I scored; mainly because it was quicker than Colin’s time. At the time I thought I’d been held up on that particular lap on the straight away from the hairpin. However, as that particular sector was the fastest I managed all weekend in that sector I wonder if that small hold up actually gave me a bit of a tow. I certainly didn’t get within 2 tenths of the sector time in the rest of the day. However, the data logs don’t really bear that out as wasn’t quicker down the straight bit at all.
Come the race start and we had a new chap in front of us in a Ginetta G50, the Mondeo having suffered a battering in the second race on Saturday and gone home. There was a rumour that the G50 driver had never done a standing start before which was slightly worrying. However, when the lights went out he got away not too badly and I was just behind him as we left the banking. He pulled away, not surprisingly, but things seemed to be going OK.
However, it wasn’t to last. The first time through the entry to the circuit extension I missed a gear and Colin managed to outbrake me into the hairpin. However, he then ran wide and I got straight past him. The problem was that on the next lap I had a large oversteery moment at Rocket and ran wide onto the grass. Colin got past and that was essentially the end of the race. I ran with Colin OK but couldn’t get close enough to attempt any sort of move. If he’d messed anything up, which I surely would have done, then I’d have got past easily but it wasn’t to be. I did get quite close to him towards the end of the race but a lapped backmarker obviously didn’t see me and was all set to drive into me at Church so I had to back out. After that I was just too far away.
Oh well. Still, it was a nice weekend and I’m set for the next weekend at Silverstone now. I’ve booked some testing to try and get my head around it all again. Hopefully, it’ll be fun.