Hi Guys
I finally got behind the wheel of a race car again after almost 2 years! I was really nervous, but excited to be racing again and be back with my racing family. Andrew and his team worked hard to build the Ford Fiesta for me to race, plus he had three other cars at the track – and he was racing one of them. There was very last minute work done on a couple of the cars, before heading to the track – one of the cars had a small fire, one had a small oil leak, but all were fixed and ready to be raced on the Sunday.
My car hadn’t had any testing or fine-tuning done to it before the race meeting, as the team just ran out of time. It was a bit of a baptism of fire for me, first to be fitted into the seat and have the harness adjusted, plus I had to bed in the brakes, so qualifying was pretty much a shakedown test session for me.
The sun was trying to shine through the clouds when I arrived at the track. We were racing on the National circuit this time.
Qualifying: the track was dry, and the sun was still trying to shine through the clouds.
Position: 24th out of 25 (though two drivers were sharing a car, so really I was 23th out of 24); Best Lap Time: 1:28.014
I took it steady, so to familiarise myself with the car and with the track again. The car handled well, it seemed to grip and turn in nicely.
The session was unfortunately cut short, as a car crashed after hitting some oil dumped by another car.
I wasn’t expecting to get a particularly fast lap time, but I was still disappointed with just how slow I was.
Race 1: the track was still dry, though with little damp patches as it had drizzled a little in the previous race, the sun had gone and was just cloudy. Still got quite warm though.
Position: 21st; Best Lap Time: 1:26.876
With having an odd start of not being allowed to overtake until we crossed the start/finish line 🤷♂️ (don’t ask nobody seems to know why), then the red flag came out on the first lap 😕 so nobody really managed to get going. We then got re-gridded up on the grid, did another green flag lap and started the race again. It was a shortened race, due to the delay.
I got a relatively good start, but the car didn’t have the grunt to accelerate, which made it frustrating not to be able to race with the others. I didn’t really think anything about it in qualifying as I wasn’t sure if it was me not pushing as hard as I could have.
Turned out it was a throttle issue, which was tweaked, so was hopeful the car would perform better in Race 2.
During the lunch break we transferred over to the outer paddock (Paddock 2), so we didn’t have to wait for the 3hr C1 race to finish (due to not being able to cross the track while any racing is going on).
Race 2: the track was still amazing dry, as it had drizzle a bit before the start, it was still cloudy with no sign of the sun. I got pretty hot, as I could feel sweat forming.
Position: 20th; Best Lap Time: 1:27.603
The starting procedure was slightly different as we were gridded up in a different place and couldn’t do the count down from the new location, so had to do the count down on the grid before doing our green flag lap. It was the same odd start of not being allowed to pass until we crossed the start/finish line though.
The car preformed marginally better, but was still a bit sluggish under acceleration, though saying that I did have a little battle with car #86 – for a couple of laps, which was fun while it lasted.
The race was the full 15minutes.
I managed to keep the car in one piece and for an untested car, which was only finished being built a couple of days beforehand, I can’t really complain. Being in a team-like structure was good too. Plus I want to say a huge thank you to Andrew Williams for getting a car built in time for me to race this weekend.
(Andrew Williams; Jason Peard; My Car; Rodney Teaque)
I came 4th and 5th in class respectively in the races, so no trophies today.
The others though got; Rodney 1st & 2nd in class; Jason 2nd & 3rd in class; Andrew 3rd in class. We are all in the BT class.
Now to look forward to Donington Park in a couple of weeks, and hopefully with a car performing better and more in line with the others in my class.
Until next time, that’s it for now.
Take Care & God Bless
Vez
veritybanksracing 