Not a great race for me, but it was almost fun..... Grats to Ati for a dominant performance and to the podium guys and finishers.
I had intended to use the Healey 100 for this race and I had asked Arnold and Mabel to load it onto the transporter as I filled out the race registration paperwork online.
When we unwrapped the car at the circuit to start practice, it was pointed out to me by someone called "server" that ... "it was not a Healey!!" , or to be more specific "car not present on server"!!
So, I took a fresh look at the transporter and I discovered that Arnold had opted for the AC Ace...never driven it before...no setup, and let's face it on last night's evidence.......no idea of how it should be driven!!!
. Arnold is currently recovering from a sudden severe headache, which started at about the same time as my crash helmet made contact with the back of his head!!. He is also undergoing some tuition on car recognition from Mabel. A slide show of car profiles is shown to Arnold, failure to correctly identify the car allows Mabel to administer a small electric charge though clips attached to his genetalia as an incentive to get it right next time.
I left the two of them to their education, reassured by the occasional squeals from Arnold that things were progressing well
Had I known at the time that Mabel had taken the opportunity to show Arnold slides of her recent trip around London Zoo and was simply administering random shocks I might have intervened. Suffice it to say that Arnold now curls into a ball and writhes moaning on the ground everytime that a Meerkat appears on the TV.!!??
Got a reasonable start and was sure that someone was inside me going into T1 so stayed wide and tried to use the oversteer power to pull the car around on a wide line. MISTAKE 1...Assuming that Arnold had set the car up to do that......it did not quite work and I clipped the final straw bale with quite spectacular results! The only good fortune was that despite 3 barrel rolls and 2 cartwheels the flipped back onto its wheels at the last second with the engine still running!....but I was plumb last.
The car's handling before that incident was suspect...afterwards it was positively dangerous!!
I did pick up a couple of places as individuals had contacts and offs, but the Ace was threatening to kill me at every left hander and it certainly had my full concentration for the next 10 laps as I tried to balance snap oversteer against lift off understeer.
Geoffers and Jose swept past me without any problems as they recovered and vanished into the distance. I actually thought that I might make it to the end and maybe even in the top 10. But as always when you start dreaming of success, fate bites you on the a**!!
I think I was about to lap Eiffel? and tried to keep it too close to the inside of a bend... of course the little oversteer demon was waiting for just such an error on my part.... the car turned in and caught itself on the tyres with terminal results...race over.
The car was dragged back to the paddock and winched onto the transporter by Mabel, whose cheerful and sunny disposition was in stark contrast to a rather subdued Arnold who scurried around like a frightened rat.
The journey home was quiet and uneventful except for the moment when Mabel commented on the wide range of wildlife in the woods alongside the road and Arnold tried to leap from the passenger door screaming that he would never bring Giraffes and Baboons to a race meeting on the transporter ever again.
Arnold is still dribbling, but has stopped mumbling to himself thanks to ( or perhaps in spite of ) Mabel's concentrated care.