BTCC Round 6 Report - West London - 05 / 07 / 07

Moving past the half way point of the championship the past weekend saw us at West London contesting round 6 of the BTCC. The usual suspects making the trip up from the south west to what was an extremely busy meeting with quite a few drivers using this meeting as practice for the upcoming BRCA and KO GP meetings at the track.

Glorious sunshine at West London

The first guys out in practice were giving us some good demonstrations of drifting on the very slippery track but soon the grip levels began to rise and meaningful testing could begin. I’d changed pretty much every setting on my car from the last meeting so was slightly disappointed to find it didn’t feel a whole lot different. One particularly early run was only cut short when I caught that vicious final turn kerbing and spun the car backwards into the barriers, Mike flicked through the laptimes on the stopwatch trying to find some sort of silver lining but there was no silver lining to be found in inconsistent 17+ second laps, thanks for trying though! lol We did manage to find a little more speed throughout the day but a best lap of 16.4 was hardly anything to write home about as fastest guys were well in the 15’s. Still, I’m getting used to that now…

Oops...

After a pleasant evening at the smallest campsite I’ve ever seen (6 pitches! Lol) it was back to the track bright and early on Sunday morning to setup. Wayne and Mike Belcher joined us in the pits alongside Mike D who was looking slightly worse for wear after not finishing his car till midnight the night before! Nothing wrong with the speed though, 15.9 in first practice. While all this was going on I was stood waiting for my chance to get ontrack for practice, a mammoth wait for a peg followed by another mammoth wait simply to get a place on the rostrum, the only amusing point being when a fellow driver who attempted to barge in at the front of the queue was ‘removed’ Wait your bloody turn! ;-)

Once I finally got out on track the car seemed okay, pretty much as it felt the day before funnily enough ;-) So with new tyres mounted it was time for round 1 of qualifying in the ‘B’ qualifiers where I’d be joined by Wayne. Mike and Jamie in the ‘A’s with Sean and Spanky in the ‘C’s How very well spread out of us all.

The 'B's await their first qualifying heat

From third at the start I could manage to get through into the lead and pull away fairly quickly which for a beautiful but short few laps gave me the impression I was going quickly, that was until Gavin Clinch and co caught and passed me in a blur leaving me to continue on round not as quickly as I thought for 6th in heat with 18 laps in 302 seconds. The ‘A’ qualifiers of course were mainly faster relegating me to 14th overall, 1 place and 1 second behind Wayne in what would be an amusing day long scrap for position! :-)

Wayne hatching a plan to beat me no doubt... ;-)

Round 2 of qualifying then and I managed to knock a few seconds off my time with another clean but unspectacular run, just missing a 19 lapper by 2 tenths which was a shame as I lost a second or so on the penultimate lap letting the very brisk leaders lap me. Still, that’s racing. Wayne encountered problems with a DNF when he looked on course for an improvement so we were still 13th and 14th but now the other way around! ;-) The big news however was up at the front where our very own Mike Doody had shot upto second place overall with a masterful display of out of control car control with his twitchy yet fast Cyclone. Top job mate!

Dad looks worried by potential stalker

Round 3 and Mike was on for pole position in the early stages before being heavily held up by the race leader, meaning he slipped to fourth. Now I always thought the slower car should move out the way during qualifiers but obviously star drivers are exempt from that one… Meanwhile back with the mere mortals and throwing different springs and brushes at the motor and new tyres at the car I managed to go a whole tenth of a second faster, hardly seemed worth it ;-) As a result I dropped to 15th overall with Wayne in 16th after another DNF, suffering the same slipping center drive pulley problems I suffered with at Stafford…..nothing a tube of thread lock won’t fix mate ;-)
Spanky was one of the drivers who dropped us down the grid as he stuck his new Cyclone 13th overall, nice going…….git. Also in the ‘A’ yet again was Jamie, getting to be a regular these days with dad Sean in the ‘C’s

The rather nice trophies which were up for grabs during the finals

So then, time for the finals and the first couple minutes of the ‘B’ final were going perfectly as I rose to 4th, then into 3rd before snatching 2nd. It all went a bit pear shaped then though as the cars performance dropped off slightly and I got half spun which dropped me to third and into a real tussle for position with Wayne and Spanky. I think those two had a coming together of sorts as suddenly I had a small gap and Wayne had vanished completely but Spanky was faster at this stage of the race and soon closed. I did get another gap at one point but as I hopped the kerb coming onto the straight a piece of rear bodyshell just caught on the rear wheel and scrubbed speed off all the way down the straight, Spanky was straight round the outside on the sweeper and we turned into the hairpin side by side as the piece of bodyshell finally popped out and enabled me to hang onto third till the finish although I defiantly didn’t deserve it.

Well I might be biased but I think that looks awesome - another great pic from www.telsshells.com

Up in the ‘A’s Mike was having a busy race, swapping positions at turn 1 before having a race long squabble with Dyson before having to settle for fourth at the finish, top result mate.

Leg 2 of the finals were a bit of an anti-climax personally, Wayne flew past me at the start but I snuck back past him at the end of the first lap when he went wide trying to nab 4th. And that was pretty much it for action, the field gradually stretched out, not a huge amount but there wasn’t the same amount of overtaking as in leg 1 although Wayne sure was all over me for the first minute or two until I got a small gap and held fifth till the end. A fifth and a third left me tied on points with Adrian for third overall but Adrian got the position and the trophy due to his higher grid position…..git ;-) Nah, well done mate, very impressive for a debut of a new car, wish I hadn’t told you to buy the thing now! Meanwhile Wayne finished where he started with 6th, could well have been on the podium had he had some better luck.

In the ‘A’s Mike put on another good show to grab 4th once again, just missing out on an overall podium position by 1 point, chin up mate, it’ll happen soon I’m sure :-) Jamie took 8th with Sean coming home 4th in the ‘C’s

In superstock Jason had a ‘mare in the finals and dropped from 2nd on the grid in the ‘B’s to 9th whereas Paul Hopkins jumped up from 8th to 6th.

Even the superstars have to fold up gazebos..... ;-)

So that’s round 6 over then, just the 4 rounds to go and on the journey home it was time for a serious think about how the season was going. To be honest I wanted to be in the ‘A’s this season, maybe that was a bit ambitious having not really driven outdoors seriously for a few years but I felt I’d done the ‘B’ final bit for long enough. You look around at the huge jumps in performance everyone else has taken, Mike is fighting at the top of the ‘A’s, Jamie has come out of nowhere to be up there with him, Wayne has gone from a regular ‘C’ Finalist last season to a regular ‘B’ finalist this year, Jason has made the ‘A’ in 19T….all pretty impressive developments and I’m well happy for all of them, but I’ll admit I’m also very jealous! And just a little bit fed-up to be completely truthful, I’m just glad we’re having so much fun at the meets this year, you’ve all kept me smiling but if I can just make that last little step I’ll be grinning till next season! With that in mind I’ll have some new toys on the pit table at Cotswolds next weekend, whoever said you couldn’t buy success? ;-)

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