I did practice in the 4sp Lightweight Jag and was in the 2:02s but some distance from Manteos.
Since Ade has a habit of keeping his powder dry until the last moment I thought that this was going to give me a very lonely drive in a solid 3rd place. So at the end of practice I left the game and switched to the standard Roadster, one of my favourites, although I must admit that the Lightweight was growing on me. I thought that this would put me in the middle of things.
I managed a 2:04 in qually, after a Lightweight Jag had finished beating me up.
At the start I gained a few places and slotted into 2nd but at the start of lap two, with Matt sat on the dirty marks on the road in front of me, I missed my braking point at T1 and allowed Geoffers through.
I hung on for a while but made some mistakes which let them get away. Then I had Manteos to cope with. We had a good tussel and he gave the back of my Roadster a few gentlemanly taps when I got things wrong right in front of him.
I can't remember exactly where he passed me initially but it wasn't on the straight. That was my attempt at getting back in front. I slipstreamed him down the straight and took the inside at T1, from which we exited side-by-side. At the next left/right wiggle I was on the right and I tried to get through there side-by-side as well. Manteos was more sensible and unknown to me had backed off a bit so that when I got the righthander wrong and slithered across the track he was able to cut across behind me and pass me on the way to the hairpin. Sorry about using your bit of the track but I think that in the heat of battle I forgot to change down. Mark tried to grab some of it as well but an exchange of hub caps and door handles fended him off at the hairpin.
Not for long though, as I fell foul of the roo-bars that he had fitted to his 275 later in the lap.
All was still to play for until the following lap when I went off into the sand at Scheivlak.
As Mark has said, that dropped me to about 10 seconds behind him and whilst I was hanging in there, I couldn't close the gap.
It was good fun and much better than stooging about in third all on my own.
Grats to Matt and Geoffers and also to Manteos in the first of the slow cars.
I probably won't bother with the wet oval race in the dark so will see you all again after that.
