Fourth at penultimate South West Series meeting
- 13 / 03 / 06
Fixture lists always have a way of making things difficult
for you don’t they? The last three weeks we’ve been at the Acorn
Centre, Torquay – approximately one large step from home but this week,
after not getting home from Birmingham Wheels until gone 3am Sunday morning,
we had to be in St.Austell for round 8 of this years south west series only
a few hours later. Somehow managing to not flatten my alarm when it went off
at 7:20am we were soon on the road to St.Austell and much to my surprise got
there in time for practice which was an added bonus – especially given
my previous results at St.Awful!
Out on track then and the car immediately
felt wrong, a quick re-setting of the diffs though and the TC3 was much
better although it was having problems handling the huge ‘jumps’
in the St.Awful track, the car visibly leaving the ground on some of them.
Adam looking more nervous by the minute about taking his 1/12 car over
the same bumps! The drivers of the little darts really did have their
work cut out on this track.
Right - Well that's the softest springs i've ever run!
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Following the last practice we’d softened the car right
off, nearly halving the spring weights in an attempt to make it handle the bumps
a bit better. One good thing about the St.Awful track is the rather ingenious
little kerbs which are placed on the end of the drain pipes and although the
1/12 drivers looked concerned by what looked like upturned plates on the inside
of turn 1 they didn’t cause many problems, quite cool actually guys :-)
Onto qualifying then and I ran in a fairly lonely third for
much of the race, unable to keep with the Cornish missiles of Justin or Russ
but well clear of the rest in our heat although another pair of Cornish missiles
in the hands of Rod and Lee had both bettered my time in their own heat to leave
me 5th after round 1.
Sean was very happy with his new MSX, especially his rather
unusual choice of all anodized green parts...
Improving to 20 laps in 309 seconds in round 2
put me upto fourth overall but I dropped back to fifth after round three behind
Lee despite slicing another four seconds off my time for 20:305. This was bad
news as I didn’t feel I had any more time left in me or the car, certainly
not enough to get into the 21 lap but you’ve got to try anyway! After
another round of what I thought was pretty good driving I only improved a second
to 20:304 to leave me fifth overall, only five seconds clear of Sean and Wayne
who seem to be perpetually fighting over the same piece of track these days,
trouble is that piece of track seems to be getting ever closer to my rear bumper!
;-) Justin stuck his new Xray T2 on pole a scant 4/100ths of a second ahead
of Russ with Rod and Lee completing the second row.
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Before the finals me and Wayne decided to take
each others cars out for a run, it’s always a bit of a giggle to try
someone else’s car! ;-) To be honest Wayne’s Evo 4 didn’t
feel a whole lot different to my TC3, I’d be tempted to liven the
back end up a little more as I had some trouble getting the front into the
slower turns although high speed cornering was good and pretty similar to
mine. It says something for the quality of modern cells that we were out
there for quite a few laps with the same cells we’d used in the last
qualifier. Wayne’s impression was also that the cars were pretty similar,
must have a fairly similar driving style then, we even get on pretty well
with each others set-ups from sim racing games! |
Jason was also on track trying out James’
new Cyclone which it has to be said looked absolutely ballistic, you want one
of those Jason ;-)
Back to the semi serious stuff then and the final
was underway with Justin and Russ scampering off into the distance leaving Rod
on his own in third from Lee, myself and the ever battling duo of Sean and Wayne.
Into lap 2 and I was still trying to pass Lee when he grip rolled which allowed
me through into fourth. Unable to match the pace of the top three I settled
into a steady pace until I saw that Sean and Wayne had the magnets on so I had
to get back on the edge to maintain a gap. I think the pair had a bit of a coming
together or close call at some point which let me run and hide a bit more. A
marshal even having to fix Sean’s car. For the last three minutes I seemed
to just be driving around on my own, making sure I kept the car in one piece
for fourth place at the end. Justin took the win after a great race with Russ
while Rod was third. Wayne came home fifth and I’m not overly sure about
the order of Sean, Lee and Henry so you’ll have to guess!
...at the risk of being dropped into the bottom qualifying heat
and disqualified from every final for the rest of the season I suppose I should
post a picture of Seans MSX that hasn't been given a touch of Photoshop ;-)
It’s Torquay next week for a local round, I sure could
use a good result to make sure I get second in the championship behind Justin
who has already wrapped up the title.
See ya!
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