TC3 Power! - 22 / 01 / 06

The second meeting of the new year and following the disaster of the first meeting we had decided to use the ever reliable TC3 for this meeting, the Xray putting it’s feet up while we work out it’s diff problems.

Practice

Following the poor attendance of the last meeting there were plenty of quick drivers around today, even practice was very entertaining with the very twisty and rewarding track layout. I was very pleased with the TC3’s performance during practice, even managing to get past Justin a few times although on an empty track he still had a little more outright pace than me but this was still going very well and we seemed to have no trouble blasting past everybody else we encountered – even Justin suggesting we just practice all day.

Qualifying

Starting second I was able to get out front in the first qualifier and make a gap to the drivers behind. I was making some mistakes though and Justin caught me before I let him past, the heat was cut short then though as the transponder loop had broken and the heat was re-run after the 1/12ths had been out on track. The re-run didn’t go well for me – of course no race will go well if you put FLAT CELLS in your car, Taxi for Ross!

This weeks track, in my opinion one of the best we've ever had, well done everyone :-)

Heat 2 turned out slightly better although the first few minutes were far from smooth. I was starting near the back after my first run woes and I was also having problems with left handers, any more than a tiny amount of steering would see the car snap sideways, as the heat wore on the problem seemed to cure itself which led me to belive it was the rear suspenion not dropping fully, a quick shock rebuild and it was fixed for the next heat. Back to heat 2 though and with the car now behaving I could overtake a few people and take 2nd with 19 laps in 316 seconds.

The car was a bit twitchy at the start of heat 3 but once the additive wore off it felt better as I ran in second. Mike was closing in though and as I attempted to keep up the neccesary gap I clipped a tube and ended up outside the track barriers which cost me 4 or 5 seconds and meant no improvement in this round.

All this meant I should have qualified 4th but Mikes transponder had been playing up again which cost him a lap and dropped him back to seventh while Mark was docked a lap for contact with Sean during that final qualifier.

		Final Into the finals and the first lap was clean with Malcolm moving past Paul into third place where he was right in my tracks until I grip rolled in lap three. Grip roll!?!? Bugger! With it being so early on in the race the marshals had to wait for all the other cars to come through before they could reach my car so I dropped from 2nd to 7th and some distance behind the others.
Busy pits prior to the finals

A few laps later and I was past Mark as he clipped a barrier and then after a few laps of staring at Seans car I was through into 5th. Next up was Malcolm and I could close right in as he made a mistake. We raced very closely for a few laps until I managed to get him off line through the right, left right sequence of corners and squeeze through with just over a minute to go. Full of confidence now I started to close in on Paul in 3rd but just ran out of laps, a couple more might have done it! ;-)

So, a busy meeting then and despite just missing out on a better result in the final I was pretty pleased. I’ve been driving like a bit of a girl recently (look at my recent results – they suck! And I’ve been a pushover) but I felt mch more back to my old self during the racing, now I just need to win again, how long has it been since that’s happened? ;-)

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