Thrashnals Round 3 - Waynes day - 20 / 11 / 07

As we arrived at Chippenham in pouring rain and gusting winds I could only be relieved that we were racing indoors, round 3 of this years Thrashnals to be exact and all the normal faces were again present as well as Mike Doody who’d made it to his first meeting since Ashby, welcome back mate.

Shock horror! Mike returns with a pinker shell than mine! ;-)

As ever there was no practice at the Thrashnals so it was straight out into qualifying where I was slightly peeved to discover my car was once again handling like a very second hand Tesco’s trolley! It seems everyone was in trouble this week though as we all slid around on the very cold and low grip surface for the first few qualifiers, I didn’t envy the mod drivers (Mike included) who were having to try and coax their insanely overpowered cars round the tight track….made for good viewing though ;-)

This weeks deceptivley challenging track

Round 3 and I decided to throw some new tyres at the car as the previous set have done over 2 meetings now and I guessed had had their best. So another five minutes of sliding around followed as I attempted to run the tyres in, thankfully they started giving some grip towards the end of the run. So still with no representative time on the board then we only had two qualifiers to go so I’d have to get my act together! Wayne on the other hand certainly had his act together as he’d danced his Cyclone to 2nd on the grid after round 2, a mere tenth of so off current pole man Dave Shed. (Henceforth known as ‘The Flying Shed’ Not that we told him that mind you although if you’re reading this we really think you should put that on your car ;-)

The Flying Shed improved once more in heat 4 but not to be outdone Wayne dug deep and found another 4 seconds although he was still in second on the grid, tantalisingly close to that pole position. My fourth qualifier was slightly more like it and jumped me upto fourth but 3rd down to 10th was pretty close so it was all to play for in the final qualifier.

Waynes well sorted Cyclone

I’d made some more setups changes for the final qualifier and I’m thankful that they were the right ones as the car felt much better. Hell I’ll say it, it felt almost like my TC3 used to on carpet ;-) The first 2 minutes were absolutely perfect but I didn’t drive the last 3 minutes quite so well, no huge mistake or anything but I started getting a bit wide and a bit careful maybe and cost myself a little bit of time but probably not the extra 2.3 seconds I’d needed to take pole off Dave or quite the 1.8 seconds I’d needed to nudge Wayne from second so third it was…….again ;-) In fourth place we had Nick Wayling while Adrian was very happy with fifth ahead of Jamie in seventh. Sean felt he had the speed for the ‘A’ but missed it by a few seconds in 14th and was enjoying being in the ‘A’ qualifiers this week after being kept pretty busy in the ‘E’ qualifiers at the previous meeting! ;-)

On with the finals then and it all went so cleanly for the first few corners until I got absolutely harpooned by Nick (who I take was getting his own back from round 1 where he thought I’d taken him out) which dropped me back to 8th, shame the referee missed that one but other than that incident the driving standards during all the races were much better all day so a big thanks to Adrian Jefferies for giving up his time to help out.

Argh! Attack of the blurry people! (Also known as Bobby, Sean and Jeremy) lol

So then, from the back of the field I began working my way forwards and had some very close racing with no touches or crashes which was good. Upto around 7th I found myself behind Jamie and Adrian before moving through into 4th with a couple minutes of the race to run. The car seemed to be going pretty quickly although I could see Wayne and Dave were still about half a lap in front and both absolutely flying. Dave had led away at the start but Wayne slipped through into the lead when Dave had an off. From there it was a scrap to the finish with Wayne keeping his cool to stay ahead and become the first south west driver to win at the Thrashnals! A very well deserved win as he drive beautifully all day……just don’t do it next time or you’re walking home though…. Alright? ;-) lol

A chuffed wayne

Meanwhile six seconds behind I nabbed 3rd on the last lap as Nick crashed in the final sweeper which I felt was a bit of justice at least. I’m pretty sure Adrian kept up his run of 5th places with Jamie somewhere behind him, sorry mate not sure of the results.

Busy pits

After packing up it was time to see Mike in the modified final. He’d definatly gotten to grips with the car as the day went on and did well to qualify in 3rd and even managed to lead the final for a few laps while Olly messed around. Pretty soon though Olly decided he’d like to win so shot off at warp speed 10 like only he can which left Mike in a still very good second place. Well done! These mods still look way too fast to me though!

So that was round 3 then and it was some pretty happy racers who were making their way back to the south west on Sunday night, let’s hope we’re all still smiling after round 4 on December 9th, see you then.

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