Grats to Ronnie and Mark on their wins and some great racing.
Race 1 was a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory for me
. Ronnie was as quick in his Cooper as I expected him to be, and took pole only to discover that he could not see the start flag
. I remembered having that problem myself in our recent F2 championship race and hoped that I might be able to exploit that in the run to T1.
I'm not sure if it was the reason, but I arrived at T1 first and got through smoothly and set about building a gap to defend the slipstreamers at the end of the lap. At about half distance I had built a nice cushion and the car felt good, so I wondered if I could squeeze a sub 1:30 lap out of tha car as it got lighter on fuel.......bad idea!!! I stuck a wheel on the grass and fired myself off into the undergrowth. That dropped me back to about 4th or 5th place and left Ronnie with a comfortable hold on 1st spot
. As a result I had some great racing chasing down Dean , Axel and Mark.
The finish was a bit of a disaster, as it transpired that Axel was running low on fuel ( I thought he was trying to be ultra defensive lol) and I lined him up for an attack out of the last corner to try and snatch second place. Axel went very tight on the inside line so I kept wide to cut back underneath him and got what I thought was a great drive off the corner.
The problem was that Mark was threatening to take advantage of our tussle. mark went wide out of the final turn...Axel stayed slightly to the right, but crucially left an inviting gap up the inside..so, I kept the gas nailed and sent my car between Axel and the Armco. Unfortunately I clipped the barrier and it bounced me slightly towards Axel/ The result was that I hit Axel...lost all 4 wheels and crossed the line airborne and without wheels. Undoubtedly the lack of wheels sticking out improved the aerodynamics and allowed me to fly faster to take the flag in 2nd place. ( I'll put in a report and let the other mods decide on that one Axel).
Race 2 showed up my lack of preparation for these 69x's. I did not have a setup, it was more like a random assortment of settings that did not wish to work with each other. Frantic tweaking during qually did nothing to improve a car that ..a) did not want to turn in...and b) when it did eventually get its nose into a corner would often decide to ignore steering inputs and only respond to large pokes of gas and/or brakes to control direction.
Quite how I wrestled a pole position out of that monster was a total mystery.
Once again I knew that the start would be crucial and sure enough although I absolutely creamed that engine off the line Martin's Matra sailed past before T1. Ronnie also spoilt the party and set off after Martin.
From where I sat Martin did look like the most promising candidate for the "Lawnkeepers award for well tended grass verges". Maybe it was his cold tyres but he was more sideways than that other fella who has a similar reputation around these parts
. Sure enough Martin got one wheel once to often onto the green stuff and let Ronnie and myself through. It quickly became obvious that Ronnie had set his car up with tremendous drive off the slower corners and he had his gearing just about perfect I think. Whereas my car was more like a rallycross rollerskate...OK provided I was drifting it under power and the terminal speed on tha long straight was impressive, but any thought of attacking Ronnie under the brakes was going to end in disaster............and it did!! several times
.
It was not until the final 3-4 laps that I began to extract some reliable pace from the car and by then it was all too late,..... and too little. In fact I probably did not deserve to pick up the points that I did given the appalling race that I ran.
I still enjoyed the racing, even if I did see the front and back of the same cars quite often between my excursions amongst the green stuff. I noticed that Martin set a stunning FL and recovered to get on the podium...great stuff Martin
. and grats to Mark and Ronnie of course.
Next week the GT's and Can Ams....mental note to myself " make sure you do at least a few laps before then to ensure that you have a driveable car!!..you muppet!!""