thruxtonrace

Against the Odds in Round One!

The weather forecast for the weekend was not good and for once the “experts” were correct. Not my favourite start to a race weekend – straight into qualifying in the wet at Thruxton. The last thing you need to be doing is fiddling with the brake bias and cleaning the water from your glasses (from the roof duct) when you are re-learning the uncompromising twists and turns of the super quick Hampshire track.

I went out first and basically made myself comfortable. Our restrictor penalty meant that pole was unlikely but we wanted to be on the front row. Kevin the race engineer on the car, radioed through after ten laps with the news that I was fifth. Not good! I needed to pull my finger out and I went for it on the next lap and jumped to 2^nd just 0.4 seconds away from pole. I parked up and immediately dropped to 4^th as the drying track allowed the Lotus and the Viper to leapfrog us...........

Rob took the next session which was also wet and went slightly quicker than me although unfortunately our grid position did not change. The simple fact was the car was struggling in picking up and at the top end going down the long straight.

Race day arrived and so did the sun! The latter was destined not to stay however. We also learnt that we had been elevated to 3rd following the information withdrawal of the Marcos. While it was good news to be elevated it was bad for the race as we have had some great battles with Andy and Tommy over the years.

Sure enough the rain arrived and unfortunately thwarted the pit lane walk-about somewhat and subsequent downpours dispersed any possibilities of starting on anything but wets. Our tactics were again going to be simple. We knew we didn’t have the fastest car – we had to play to our strengths. We needed to look after the tyres as a stop delayed to move to slicks would be too expensive time-wise – I also needed to stay in touch but out of trouble.

And this is what I basically did. Not the best of starts for me, but when you are racing against new driver combinations you are not quite sure what they will try to do on the first lap. Sure enough the TVR went for it and I let him go. We had been quicker than them in qualifying so I wasn’t too concerned at this stage and if he mixed it with the leaders then all the better.

I was annoyed however to let myself get caught behind one of the yellow 911’s – I did not want to get delayed from the leading trio any longer than I needed to. I was also a little concerned with the brakes as my first experience of applying them in anger sent me straight on as the fronts locked up. This coincided with the arrival of John Cleland down my inside ‘on a mission’. He inadvertently let his exuberance get the better of him and made significant contact with the yellow Porsche in front of me, which pirouetted out of the way. I hit my brakes to avoid contact which also assisted the leading three. I needed to catch them up again in a hurry if I was not going to leave Rob with too much to do.

This was the cue for the first safety car. It came out as a result of the yellow Porsche incident and bunched us all up again – me behind the leading trio and John Cleland . I needed to pass John quickly after the restart which I did and set about the Lotus. He assisted me by having an incident with an errant back marker and spun at the chicane. At the same time the TVR had spun at Church and lost its front end so I was second behind the Viper.

This also decided to test its limits of adhesion and spun at the chicane leaving us nose to tail as we entered the pit-lane for the driver change.

We were a little slower than normal as I struggled to locate neutral but were still significantly faster than our opposition and had a six second advantage over the Viper as Rob exited the pits.

He then drove a "storming" race to hold off Neil Cunningham in the Viper for 29 minutes. The latter has a significant power advantage to us now so Rob had to ensure he carried his speed through the corners. This he did brilliantly (aided by our Michelin tyres) and held off each of the Viper challenges to take victory by a mere 0.4 of a second.

A great start to the season for the team which coincided with the Storm’s first international event win in Spain! In spite of our win we are still canvassing for some help with our restrictors....Hopefully for Croft we will be allowed one back!!