All that, was following Qualy, where it became clear my car was possessed. Really. The throttle response bore little or no relationship to the input from the right foot. A go faster instruction would cause the engine to die for a moment, cough, and then explode in a flurry of revs (often accompanied by the rear end of the car volunteering to lead for a bit). The opposite happened when coming off the throttle…basically nothing. Revs would stay high for a second, two seconds maybe ten. Great for pushing out the boundaries of braking points, but not hugely fun in the wet. McMillan swapped lots of bits over, but couldn’t correct anything. Finally Ben put some tape over the throttle idle valve thing, and cranked open the idle screw. Not an idea solution, but safer than a random engine.

The restart of race one was a bit better. Briefly. I got a reasonable start, kept it together for a whole lap, before fluffing a gear change and running wide at Becketts. Daryl had spun in front of me, and just as I thought I was going to avoid him, he found some grip and..well…watch the video.

Normally - about here, I would include the video, however, Silverstone have draconian measures (£25k fee) if videos “appear” on the internet…so if you would like a copy, mail me.

Stunningly, McMillan were able to put it back together again and I was out for race two. Unfortunately, the cameras were also out, batteries died, the front one before the 1st corner, the rear a few laps in. My race consisted of outbraking myself at Brooklands, making it all the way through the gravel, and out the other side, apparently to a round of applause from the assembled crowd in the BRDC stands, over the grass and rejoining (eventually) somewhere between Luffield and Woodcote. Quite a good cross country expedition, but not time saving: no hamilton-esque penalty! I spent a few laps playing catchup with the pack in front, then had a good scrap with Roger, the James’s, and eventually Hugh, who had taken a similar trip to the Brooklands gravel, but had been assisted out by the marshals. Actually Hugh kind of went past us like a knife through butter…

Not one of the better events of the season for me really, and time and work pressures are probably going to keep me from Mallory at least.

Nobody’s timing equipment seemed to be working reliably, times were all over the place for the second session making it difficult to learn what was fast. The same applied to the qualy session: If my lap timer had been believed I would have been 5th…I was not happy that the results sheet had me at 17th!

Come the race, a cracking start saw me gain a few places, and some great side-by-side action with Tom ensued, until Paul Turley went off in front of me, and I followed just behind. Not sure why either of us went off to be honest! The rest of the race was mediocre at best and I was not in the best of moods afterwards!

Anyway, enjoy the video, now with EgoCam.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Qualy was wet. My last wet qualy, where I changed nothing on the car setup was awful, so this time, I changed everything, and removed all the roll bars and added a couple of PSI to the tyres. P6. Wow. That seemed to work.

Race 1 was so wet, its hardly worth publishing the video, because you won’t see anything. My plan was just to stay on the track, not worry too much about losing places, and hopefully end up with a bunch of points. Finished 11th. Happy.

Race 2 on the Monday was dry. Roll bars back on and engage attack mode. Started from P10, ended up P7. Happy! There were times I was higher than that, and times I was further back. A last lap incident in-front of me gifted 3 places, but those are the breaks. More to the point, I nearly had a repeat of last year, this time caused by me: I went up the inside of David Shaw just as he decided to close the door into Russell. This blew my braking for the chicane, and I tagged Tim Go. Luckily we all got away with it.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Next: Snetterton commeth…this weekend. And boy am I looking forward to it. (that was sarcasm by the way!) You may remember what happened last year but probably not my visit to the COC the year before (on the test day!!!). Both times I was following Mike Rowland at the time of the incident. This time Mike hasn’t entered. I consider that to be a good sign. Sorry Mike - hope to see you soon, somewhere else!

So. Challenges for the weekend - in order!

• Don’t crash
• Don’t spin in the race
• Don’t get hit by Shunty
• Don’t get hit by anyone
• Don’t get sent to the COC
• Avoid the qualy race
• Run at my “new” pace…not my old one!

I’ll be awarding marks out of 7 later.

When the lights went out I found 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears, and worked my way up from 17th to 10th place by lap 5.  Chris Rome and Ben were about 3 seconds in-front of me and I was concentrating on catching them, seemingly making time by monstering the Esses and Bobbies.  Unfortunately Bobbies bit, giving me a nice view of the rape field, and time to contemplate my driving while the entire field went past, before I could safely rejoin.  Combe 1, Monkey 0.  Seeing the final outcome of Ben v Chris, its not such a bad thing I was safely half a lap behind by then!

Roll on Snet.

[See post to watch Flash video]

It was also a strange weekend for driving.  The first session on Friday was a bit of a disaster - I seemed to be a few seconds off the pace, with a car that didn’t seem to want to go around the faster corners at all.  Come to think of it, it wasn’t too keen on the slower corners either.  My “I’m not going to play with the car setup, instead I’m just going to learn to drive it” attitude cracked rapidly, and I changed the front anti roll bar.  Looking at the weather, I figured out we may only have one more dry session, so I changed the rear too in an effort to aim for right first time, rather than gradual changes. 

Then, with some sage advice on lines from from Tim GO,  I went out, locked the wheels every time I braked, gave up, came in, found one of the front tyres was down to canvas.  And set about borrowing another to test on….thanks Mr Smith.

Next session I was three seconds faster, but the car was shaking like a b*****d every time I braked. Final session I was keeping up with quick cars in the class above me, but the car was still all over the place under braking.  However, I did feel I was improving - not just with car setup, but consistently hitting apexes, and finding solutions to the corners I couldn’t “get” in the 1st session.  Friday ended with Andy M changing my discs for me.  It was a marginal call about whether this was “maintenance” or a trackside fix: the discs and pads were nearly new and I had cooked them on event (I think - don’t see that I over heated anything at Oulton!) but McMillan agreed to change them anyway.  Thanks lads.

The first real test was to come - Saturday’s timed practice (or Qualy as its known to its friends).  I went down early in the hope of emulating my “chase a mega” final session, and having some quick guys behind me to latch onto.  Sadly those I would like to have followed either fell off (oops Hugh) or went off into the distance, but chasing them gave me my fastest lap so far.  JOS (a very quick lad who finally took second place on the grid) got past me, and so I latched onto him and followed for the rest of the session : but I never beat my early lap time.

After the session I was all smiles - I knew that I’d really driven at a pace I’d not been near before.  I’d been passing the people I normally race with like they were standing still.  I felt like I was  on fire.  Someone told me the totem poll (live display of positions) had me 3rd for a while and when the results were published I was 4th.  Second Row! Never been in the top 10 before.  Blimey!

The gap between practice and race seemed huge, and the task of staring near the front daunting. However everyone assured me I had earned my place there.  And it would all be OK.  Of course, they were wrong.

I forgot my drill of slotting the stick between 1st and 2nd gear to open up the gate, until the last seconds, then couldn’t get the car into 1st.  With nano-seconds to spare I and some panic’d actions got it into 1st, the lights went out and for around a second, I got a good start: I was catching 2nd place man JOS.  Then came comedy of errors - the shift to second gear, the 2nd attempt at the shift, me moving the car to the top rail to get out of the way of the pursuing hoards, the desperate yanking on the gear lever before finally getting it into gear.  By now the pack was scything past at speed, and by turn 2 I’d probably dropped 18 or 20 places.  A couple more passed me as  I struggled to find some composure, and talked myself into calming down - letting the pack string out for a corner or 2 then fighting back.

At the end of lap 1 I was in 25th place.  Then the fight back began.  Great racing : I hope I didn’t upset anyone, I think i kept it clean ?  Certainly I got hit from behind a couple of times, but no more than a tap - oh and I lost my front numberplate going into the final chicane in one of those “OMG you’re braking there?!?! ….ANCHORS….phew” moments.

Progress continued through the pack until I got to 12th place.  With no-one left in sight in front of me, and the last car passed no longer in my rear view, I did what I always do in these situations…looked at the clock, figured last lap, gave myself a good talking to about finishing the race, then fell off into the gravel on the exit of turn 8.

Back to 17th place for the flag.

 So in the end - I’d found some pace, driven the car in a way I had never done before, then blown it all when it counted.  Twice.  Silly bunt.

Then I’m going to spend the day in the rain, trying to figure out where the corners are.

Then I’m going to find some food, have a beer and sleep in the car, surrounded by wet racewear.

Then get up, shower, put on the (wet) race suit and spend a day (in the rain) desperatly failing to emulate my recent fluke 10th place at Oulton Park.

Then repeat the food, beer and in-car sleeping, this time surrounded by even more wet apparel.

Then spend sunday wearing orange and watching other cars (in the rain) - I’m marshaling.

Then haul the rig home.

…

And we do this for fun ?

Here she is.

[See post to watch Flash video]