A very wet race weekend saw some highs and lows!
The fourth meeting of the season hadn’t originally been part of my schedule with my original agreement having only covered the previous two meetings at Thruxton and Oulton Park as well as next weekend’s BTCC-support event at Croft I managed to secure the funding to do Silverstone and the rest of the seasoon as well!
I missed the pre race testing due to work commitments so went straight into qualifying and secured 8th place on the 39 car rgid.
Unfortunately – having made up two places at the start – I was tipped into a spin going through Becketts on the second lap found himself firmly in the wrong place at the wrong time and was collected by one of the cars behind in a side on collistion; putting me out of the race on the spot and causing heavy damage to my car.
A late night for the team saw my car repaired in time for the second race, which was held in wet conditions on Sunday morning. Forced to start from the pit lane after my car started to mist-up on the warming up lap, I made it up to 17th place but was then forced back into the pits with ongoing visibility issues and left to retire from the race.
With the team resolving the issue in time for race three, I again lined up at the back of the field but was once again a man on a mission when the lights went out – climbing from 37th to 21st on lap one and then breaking into the top 20 on lap two. As heavy rain led to worsening track conditions, I battled into 10th place before the decision was taken to end the race at the end of lap five, with an incident on the start/finish line then causing the race to be red-flagged and the result declared a lap earlier. Aparently I made up an 53 places across the three Silverstone races!
Action packed is the best way to describe this weekend! Considering we arrived at the circuit with no testing, I was happy with my performance in qualifying but it was disappointing to be taken out of Race 1 in the way we were, as I really felt we were on for our best finish yet.
The team did an amazing job to repair the car (Bert Goose) and worked late into the night to make sure I was out for race two but we were struggling to stop the car from misting up and despite making up loads of places early on, I had no option but to pit as I simply couldn’t see and it was too dangerous to continue.
Race 3 however was great fun and I was really in my element in difficult conditions. To come through to 10th at the finish was fantastic, even if we then lost out when the result was taken back a lap. To see the reaction of the team when I came back to the pits at the end was really uplifting at the end of a difficult weekend.
I was able to learn an awful lot this weekend and I don’t think it will be long before we can start pushing for some silverware, especially as I now know that I’m going to be in the car for the rest of the season.
Press release link by Picturesports
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