Saturday 26th June and an incredibly hot day greeted
us at Mendips Raceway for round 4 with the drivers in for an exhausting
meeting....these are the times when you really don't want to be pulling
on thick fireproof overalls, underhelmet, gloves, helmet and everything
else!
Practice went well with the drivers enjoying a
clean track, Brians Tigra looking fast and seemingly not suffering from
its knock on the wall in the final at the last meeting.
Race 1 and Brian got past #904 Wilson Hamilton
on lap 1 before closing onto the back of #205 Mike Norton. Following
Mike allowed #904 and #718 Colin White to close in and Brian was getting
visibly frustrated at not being able to get onto the outside of Mike.
It's the age old problem with hotrod racing I suppose. If the guy in
front is reasonably competitive and stays on a pure racing line (which
he invariably will in any level of hotrod racing) then it's very near
impossible to get onto the outside unless the guy in front drops onto
an inside line.
With the laps passing Brian tried to make a gap
that wasn't really there coming out of the top corner and both cars
span onto the infield. The pair rejoined but just after doing so and
letting the closing cars through Brian went to turn into the top corner
but didn't see #117 Dave Tossel coming through half on his inside. The
contact sent both cars onto the infield and straight into the armco.
Despite heavy damage to the cars both Brian and
Dave were okay but would obviously take no further part in the meeting
so once the team had straightened out the Tigra enough to get it on
the trailer it was straight into laid back spectator mode for the rest
of the meeting!
As I write England have also just been knocked
out of the world cup and a german has won the grand prix so all in all
a pretty bad weekend! Next week we'll be up the garage to repair the
Tigra, a quick glance reveals a bent wishbone and compression strut,
broken front and rear bumpers, sill, front right wing and right side
door as well as a broken radiator and some bent panel mounting tubes.
The steering column is also pretty bent and the steering rack itself
is probably scrap too but the main thing is that the main chassis itself
is fine and most of the expensive parts survived intact! Just need a
few days to sort it out then.......
