Indoor season ends with SWS Round 12 - 03 / 04 / 05

Today was the last round of the South West Series and the last indoor meeting this season. After pole and win at Round 11 in Plymouth Ross still had a small chance of moving past Russel into third place in the series although the chance virtually disappeared when Russel entered ;) Ross needed to TQ and win again with Russel needing to score less than 92 points - and with the drivers entered it didn't look possible for him to drop that many points.

Qualifying

So into round 1 of qualifying and we were off to a dreadful start as I twice drove myself into the barriers trying to pass Sean before retiring. Things improved in the second heat as we moved upto third overall after starting at the back. In truth I can't really remember what happened in the third race - I think I was still daydreaming about West London the week before and being surrounded by over 100 really competitive drivers! ;) We started the final qualifier in third and after gearing up the new motor the car felt much better and although we remained third we closed the gap to pole man Russel to 4 seconds with Paul taking second. Malcolm lined up 4th followed by Jason and Barry rounding out the 'A' Finalists.

Final

A clash half way round the first lap between myself and Russel dropped us to last and miles behind the others. Passing Russel after another of his mistakes several laps later the car felt much better as we had again geared it up for the final. A few laps later we were past Barry and into 4th and after following Jason for a few laps we were past him and upto third. Next up was second placed Malcolm who had opened up a big gap the length of the straight with around 1 and a half minutes to go. The car was working very well now though and I was still irritated at having to come from this far back and going onto the last lap the gap had disappeared, the buzzer came to Malcolms rescue though and I had to settle for third. Looking at the lap times after the race at least the car and myself now really have some pace and i'm looking forward to the second round of the Clubmans Cup Championship at Southend on the 10th of April!

C ya!

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