18 April 2005

DONINGTON RACE REPORT

So it's welcome to the 2005 season and we are off and running once again. It's been a long cold off season and we are all delighted to be racing once again.

Winter didn't seem far behind us given the arctic temperatures during the race weekend, in fact I set my fastest lap of the Friday test during a mild flurry of snow.

Saturday qualifying was tricky as it was taking six or seven laps to get any meaningful heat into the tyres and then with traffic making life difficult it was a relief to qualify seventh and eighth for round one and two respectively.

Race one on Saturday afternoon was granted two warming up laps to attempt to get some temperature into the tyres. I expected carnage in the first few corners although it didn't turn out quite so bad. Although my opening laps were not stunning I quickly found the groove and raced well with one of my my new team-mates, Ben Winrow.

Swapping places twice in two laps he was ahead when Tom Onslow Cole lost his engine, along with its oil, down the Craners. An exciting twist was therefore added to one of the fastest corners in the UK and it was fortunate we made it through unscathed, albeit sideways. The next innocents to enter the Craners left it backwards at high speed, taking a short time to arrive at the scene of the accident. The red flags were understandably shown moments later, giving me fifth on count back.

Sunday was a little warmer and my start was better. My cunning plan was to swoop around the outside of all and sundry at Redgate, which works so long as no one is spat out of the pack. Sadly this was the case and subsequent avoiding action meant I briefly left the circuit, rejoining last.

Having made up a couple of places I then witnessed Steven Hunter's monster smash at the chicane and very cleverly managed to spin on its oil next time around. No-one else did, so full marks for making a porridge of that one. Lining up last behind the safety car was bad enough but then at the restart I managed to have another moment on the same patch(?!) and dropped 10 car lengths further back. Flushing with embarrassment under my helmet I salvaged eighth at the flag after some excellent racing and not so much as a scratch on the newly rebuilt and liveried car.

So fifth in the championship and heading for Thruxton, where we expect to be more competitive...