Firstly, I would like to say thank you to Elgan for all your incredible hard work and making all this fun possible and both Elgan & I would like to add our thanks to Paul, Jez, Mark, Jamie and Andy for the usual slick meeting.
Qualifying
We just managed to get the new car (Elise 111R) out for qualifying after trying to get a faulty Cartek system working for over 4 hours – thanks Simon for your help. Times weren’t as hot as I had wished but considering it was the first time I’d sat in the car didn’t do too bad. Lack of time also prevented us from putting a complete new set of tyres on the car - Yokohama guys said that it’s not a good idea to mix compounds (M on the rear and LTS on the front) and that we were lucky to have stayed on the track (it was that or not qualify). Gearbox was also a problem – everything seemed to have shifted left and was a nightmare trying to select gears and needed 2 hands and lots of brut force to select reverse.
Race 1
Pretty lonely really. Not a good start with Sarah getting past me but managed to avoid her spinning in front of me exiting Craners. Then spent too many laps on my own not being able to close the big gap between myself, Tom, Matt and Paul Pattison. Saw that Hans had spun and thought that’s an easy way to gain a place. Safety Car then allowed Hans to recover lost ground. When the Safety Car waived us through and I was a bit more eager than Paul Pattison to reach the back of the pack ready for the restart and mistakenly overtook him and then had pull back and let him pass me. Hans was obviously keen to get by me as soon as poss on the restart but I thought that I could match him and give him a good fight over the last couple of laps. Found that not being able to get 2nd and 3rd without a major battle was really starting to compromise my entries into the corners and in particular the chicane and managed to loose it under pressure from Hans into McLeans whilst fighting with the gearbox. All in all not a bad race but times weren’t as good as I’d previously managed in the Exige on the trackday.
Race 2
Looked forward to the Handicap race as I really enjoy these. Started on the grid next to Paul Quinn with Russ Treasure in front of us. Good start and left Paul off the line, saw Russ’s drive shaft go straight away. Gearbox already started playing up again and it wasn’t long before I was joined by the guys behind me. Trying to get 2nd for the chicane was a nightmare and was having to coast into it in neutral and try to ram it in before getting on to the Wheatcroft straight. A couple of laps on it was then impossible to get 3rd coming out of the chicane and I was losing so much time trying to get it in 4 or 5 times that I had to change from 2nd to 4th as it just wasn’t working. Hitting the rev limiter at 8,000 in 2nd coming out of the chicane and then changing up into 4th was so bloody frustrating as the car is useless until you get it up onto the 2nd cam at 6,000 revs and selecting 4th so early meant that I was waiting a lifetime to get from 3,500 revs up to 6,000 and then would have to try and get 3rd again for Redgate. This was really soul destroying and was wearing me out. Cars were flying by me. I was now also loosing time on the the Dunlop straight as changing up into 5th which was needed by half way was making the change down for the chicane even more difficult so was now having to keep the car in 4th down here with it spluttering on the rev limiter and loosing a good 10mph + on not using 5th. I was ready to throw in the towel now as I was getting so angry and quite ragged trying to make up time elsewhere on the track.
I’m sorry James if I took it out on you at the end of the race but I was so wound up on from shear frustration. If you had the corner as you think you did I apologise. When you passed me and gestured with your hand I thought either he thinks that was a good bit of racing or I’d peed him off in some way. It was the latter.
The car is now having its engine out so that we can check out the gearbox, as I’m not going to race like that again, although I still enjoyed it in the end. Hope we can get everything sorted for Spa and that I wont have any excuses.
