Grats to Hristo and Mike for some stunning pace out front, I was within a couple of tenths of my PB and could not match the times you posted in qually. A clean lap at Jops with so many on the grid was hard to find and my only clear run without errors took me up towards the front of the grid but even 3rd spot was stolen from me by the "twist"!! lol
Must confess that the grid switch fooled me completely
I was a little late getting to the grid and recall thinking that Sam appeared to be in front of me " how strange??", must be prib playing up or lag or something, but then switched my attention to the starter.
Totally messed up the start and theought that was how Sam jumped me into T1 with Nicky and Tim hot on his heels. As a result of being swamped for turns 1 and 2, I was off the racing line and losing ground to the leaders that I was never to recover. ( not that I am confident I could have lived with their pace last night!!
)
Once the race settled down and I got the Banshee Brabham wound up, I closed on Nicky and was caught of guard by his wobble as he mentioned which knocked him off ( sorry nicky ) that gave me targets of Tim and a recovering Sam.
After a couple of attempts at squeezing past Tim I eventually made it , only for Tim to vanish to be replaced by Sam with whom I battled for the rest of the race. As he says, we were quite evenly matched although I could see where I was quicker but his lag deterred any marginal moves that might have resulted in tears for both of us. That's no criticism of you Sam, you were not to know that you were doing a very good frog impression at times
I think we had 3 or 4 laps to go and I was once again behind Sam ( we had swapped 3rd place a couple of times through the race) and was looking for an opening to sneak through again before the finish.
Turn 1 as Mike says is all about maximum attack and using all of the road, except on this occasion I used just a little bit too much attack and about 100mm too much road. My outside rear wheel went onto the sandy stuff and the tail stepped out as I had already planted the right foot. This kicked off a monumental tank slapper that I thought I had caught, until it whipped me sideways once more and off to the left of the track where a huge crunch announced the presence of a telegraph pole.
I thought "that's it race over...pillock!!" but the car still had all its wheels and the engine was still running, so I gingerly poked it onto the tarmac and gave it some welly towards T2 fully expecting a sudden lurch to left or right under braking.
But no, everything was perfect even if I was now destined for 4th spot at best...or at least I thought thats where I would be until that sneaky Sam launched himself out of the long grass at the outside of T2 in an attempt to ambush me!!! It scared the c**p out of me !! I was not expecting that!! I thought he was miles away by now!!
It soon became apparent that Sam had suffered some serious damage and could not match his previous speed and I was able to cruise home in 3rd...hard luck Sam, because I am not sure which of us would have crossed the finish line first had we both survived to the end.
Thanks to Tim for organising and to everyone who took part, I feel vindicated in suggesting the circuit and agree that it is probably best suited to 65's. Yes, the passing opportunities were limited last night but I think that was partly due to the single chassis element where the field divided down into ability bands and drivers were at their max speed in identical cars. So there was not enough diffence in
top speed vs handling that might be the case with a mixed grid which would offer more opportunities perhaps.
All in all great fun and thoroughly enjoyable
Thanks Tim
