PRE SEASON PREPERATIONS
As the first race of the season drew closer the usual excitement started to build. The car was prepared and ready, sporting a new gt gearbox (I ran a gt box last year but it had no second gear on the down change) I also had replaced part of the exhaust system making it a complete Tony Law set from manifold to silencer. I’d also generally tidied the car up, new disks and pads, new throttle system and new tyres. Things looked promising!
So that the Lorry didn’t feel left out it was treated to a new radiator for Christmas, a fuel burning eberspacer night heater, 2 new wall cabinets and some carpeting.
I’d booked a track day session at Snetterton the Friday before the first race the plan being to do a shake down, bed in the brakes and tires. I also wanted to make sure the nut behind the wheel was working!
The day started wet and a big grin went with the donuts I accidentally performed in the paddock! (well the first one was an accident) As i waited to head on track the cooling system suddenly blew up and i was surrounded by steam. A closer look and some help from Gary revealed that the inside of one of the cooling hoses had gone. With that replaced things went much better and we were soon flying through the puddles! Sadly as the track dried i couldn’t find the speed I wanted. A case of rusty driver i think, disappointing though.
RACE DAY
Race day finally dawned, bright and dry. The car flew through scruitineering the only adjustment being needed, a tightening of the panhard rod and soon we were queueing for Qualifying.
Qualifying went well, the car felt good and I started to get back into the groove of lapping snetterton. Sadly my Lap timer didn’t work (the blanking was set too low) giving me a reading of 1 second a lap (I don’t think so!) and I never really managed to find a good tow. I had no idea what times I was doing but guessed it was 1.53’s. Sadly I was right and whilst faster than the test session my qualifying slot was still 3 seconds a lap than my fastest time last year.
This put me twenty third on the grid for the race not ideal but at least I new I was in for an interesting race. In practice I only made it as far as 19th by the checkered flag but I had some cracking battles on the way. In particular one with Rich and Ali.
Dicing and swapping positions corner after corner we had some interesting moments which included a quick trip to visit the scenery after i out braked myself at Russells and another interesting moment when we came in to a corner three abreast (Ali on one side of me, Rich on the other) and Ali spun!
If you want to see my race here it is from Rich’s view point. It’s split in to three sections to make it faster to download.
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_TlTsJkuWY
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFrhTIb8cI
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJFMmBUnSEw
(cheers Rich for these)
A race which was brilliant fun and a great start back to the season.
Roll on Lydden in one months time. 🙂
VIPA Racing 