Donington
Well, what a weekend!
As anyone who has read some of this earlier thread, 3 years ago I rolled the car in the gravel trap at the bottom of craners after a power steering leak covered the rear tires with fluid. Then 2 months later after rebuilding the car we returned there only for the engine to bend a valve or two when the bottom pulley slipped. Both of these instances occured in qualifying so up until this weekend I had never raced at Donington and had precious little track time on any other occasion, with it not being very local to me.
So, without a test day under the belt I began a tentative qualifying session trying to refresh my memory of the track. This time was cut short after just 2 laps when another competitor decided to split an oil line and start a small fire under their car bringing out the red flag.
On the restart we were left with just 20 minutes for us both to get some laps in, so I did another 5 laps and then let Paul jump in as he hadn't driven the car since Oulton and a fair bit had changed since then.
Paul is a handy driver at the best of times and as Donny is only 20 minutes from his house, he's driven it quite a lot and indeed won in his own car last year.
He stuck the car 3rd on the grid.
As I was starting the race and Paul was talking about the possibility of us winning, my strategy was all about damage limitation. I knew I wouldn't be able to match the laps times of the cars around me, so all I had to do was make sure I got through Redgate, turn 1 cleanly and then try and tuck behind someone and learn the lines and braking points as quickly as I could. No problem!
So a nervous few hours passed before our race at 3.55pm. We were reasonably happy with the car but removed the wheels, did a thorough spanner check and then decided on tire pressures all the time keeping an eye on the skies for the threatening rain.
Fortunately the rain only came at lunch time and the track had plenty of time to dry out before I pulled out of the assembly area and on to the track third behind the safety car ready for the rolling start.
Fortunately the grid formation put me on the inside for turn 1, although 4th position man decided he'd try and muscle me to the outside on the formation lap hoping I'd get confused and concede. I didn't! And as the lights went out, the pole sitter in front of me bogged down so I tucked up the inside of him and took the 1st corner tight. However faster cars came around the outside and as we went down into Craners I was in 4th with the rest of the 30 odd cars looming down on me from behind.
The white and red 106 of Martin Addison tried to get down the inside of me into Old Hairpin but quickly realised there was no room and promptly upset the ballance of his car and spun narrowly missing my back bumper. (wait until you see the footage!) It was close.
And although I managed to hold everyone else off for the first lap it was clear I wasn't going to be able to keep them behind me indefinitely and the leading pack were disappearing into the distance. So I let a couple through to relieve some pressure and decided to follow them hopefully increasing my pace and keeping on their tail. Which worked. By the time we came in for the driver change I had been following Martin Adison for 3 or 4 laps, catching him at various points on the circuit but unable to get him on the corners or match his corner exit speed either. So I pitted in 6th place and due to our super quick (well practised) driver changes Paul got out in 4th.
From there it was a war of attrition between Paul and his brother Tom, also in a Clio. As the other cars pitted Paul found himself in 1st place. Helped by success penalties being applied to other front runners (including his brother) from previous wins in Tin Tops.
And that's where Paul stayed until the gearbox started to give up and the brakes started to overheat. After a couple of lockups and missed gears Tom was on his tail and the remaining 10 minutes was a battle for the lead with several exchanges of places, a very nervous look on my face (and also on Paul and Tom's dad's face!) until at last Paul came over the line first with Tom on his bumper and a rather over excited commentator screaming the place down!
Touted by the organisers as probably the best race of the season, I have to say I agree. And some!
Video to follow.
