Bye bye 2006 - 19 / 12 / 06

December 17th Mums birthday and also the last race meeting of 2006 at the Acorn centre Torquay. A good turnout of drivers for this meeting including the mighty brisk national racer Rob West who was racing his new Schumacher. I think ;-)

I’d made some changes to the TC3 for this meeting with stiffer damping, shorter wheelbase and generally giving the car a bit of attention. I was pleased with the result in practice and eagerly agreed to try some of Seans cells. I have to say the result was staggering, the power increase was just unbelievable, if you’d had said the car now had a 19T instead of a 27T I’d have believed you, it was an absolute rocket! As a result I’m pleased to announce I’m now sponsored by Team Scream UK! Lol Thanks to Jeremy. After seeing how much more power I had with just a set of cells I can’t wait for the BTCC next summer when i’ll have several sets of brand news cells and motors, should be a good year!

Second attempt at this photo, see the Forum for the first ;-)

So, onto the racing then and with my old cells back in the car it felt decidedly dull in comparison but it was handling well and I managed to win my heat although Paul Rose just beaten me to the fastest time of round by a tenth or so with 21 laps in 312 seconds.

Into the second qualifier and from the front I could open up a little gap in the opening laps but Wayne ‘Shaggy’ Belcher was clearly ‘on one’ and began to catch up, and once he’d gone past he slowly but surely edged clear. I managed to stop the gap widening near the end but there’s no doubting that Shaggy is really getting to grips with his Cyclone and is a force to be reckoned with these days! Well done mate, always knew you’d be up there one day, it was just a matter of time :-)

Yet another cool new shell for Sean!

So, at the end of round 2 Mike Doody had moved to the top of the timesheets after transponder problems in Round 1 meant he did not record a time. So a pretty damm good performance in round 2 with a tweaked car! 2nd place was Paul Rose with Shaggy in third ahead of myself and a whole host of others clambering for the ‘A’ Final spots.

Adrians 'stealth car' ;-)

For round 3 I had a new set of hastily soldered together cells in the car and after spending the first few laps making some fairly interesting lines as I got used to the power I began to get things together a little more and could put some decent laptimes in and improve to 21 laps in 304 seconds. At the end of the round this left me narrowly behind Doody in first and Rob West who had stormed upto second after beginning to look more comfortable with his car. Fourth place was Paul Rose with Wayne in fifth ahead of a manic scrap for the final few ‘A’ Final places which included Adrian, Sean, Jamie, Paul Hopkins and pretty much everyone else! ;-)

The final round saw Rob West put a fantastic 22 lapper in to take pole ahead of Doody and myself. I actually thought I drove really well in this qualifier but with the old cells in the car just didn’t have the power and I was three seconds off my previous run. Paul Rose took fourth ahead of Shaggy in fifth, then Adrian, Sean and Jamie.

New cells in for the final and I was confident of being able to have a crack at the guys ahead but I was all over the place at the start and having major difficulty just keeping the car on its wheels and pointing in the right direction. In hindsight it was a massive mistake to put additive on for the final, the car just had way too much front end grip, a slight touch of steering and it was off, and with that much front end grip I had to be careful not to grip roll on the fast parts. After dropping behind Paul Rose on lap 2 I had a few attempts at getting back past him during the race but it wasn’t going to happen, I had all my attentions on just keeping the car on track, there was none left for overtaking! Up front Rob romped away for the win ahead of Doody who was having a similar problem to myself. Paul Rose took third ahead of me, then Adrian with a good drive in fifth (seemingly he has a stealth car this week too as I can’t say I saw him on track once all day! Lol) and Shaggy who took sixth after having some problems in the final. Sean just beat Jamie in the race for seventh.

So, that’s the last day of racing in 2006 then and although I’m disappointed at making a complete mess of my final I’m very pleased with the amount of Team Scream power I know I’ll have for the BTCC this summer! Lol

Have a good Christmas everyone, see you in January! :-)

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