Back to the front at TRAK Round 7 - 24 / 01 / 07

Round 7 of the TRAK Indoor series and we had a reasonably strong field of drivers boosted by the visiting entry of Rob West, back for another TRAK outing this year. We were however without Paul Rose and Hopkins who were at the 1/12 Nationals and although Mike Doody was in attendance all day he didn’t have anything to race after a spectacularly bad meeting at the Thrashnalls last week, cheer up mate, it’ll all come good next week :-) In stark contrast Jason had a storming outing at the last Thrashnalls to finish 4th in the ‘A’ Final, top result! :-)

Very smart matching shells of Sean and Jason Guy ready for this years BTCC

Out for some practice then to try and get to grips with the tricky looking new track layout for this week….this proving to be doubly difficult as the new tyres were giving very little grip. A few minutes and the tyres started working a little better although the car was rolling around a little too much and scrubbing speed as a result, a quick change of front springs though and the car was transformed, all ready for race 1 then!

A shot of the new track layout, challenging but fun once you get it right. Note those tricky chicanes in the centre there! (Thanks to Jason for the pic)

From the back of heat 1 I got in a few good opening laps before driving straight into a crashed Jamie and dropping myself miles back from the pack. The car was just going so well though that I could catch and pass everyone upto 2nd and then take provisional pole after Rob dumped late on. Well in his defence he did only manage to get 2000mah into his cells before the start! ;-)

Busy at work in the pits (Thanks to Jason for the pic)

So then, off the front in Round 2 ahead of Jason, Rob and the rest I was confident of pulling away, at least that was the plan until the car died at turn 2 and sent me into the inside barrier. Slightly confused I recovered and carried on round the lap but the car kept cutting out so it was race over, the problem turning out to be a huge amount of carpet which had found its way into the motor, now there’s an unusual problem!

Let's have another pic of that shell, almost makes me think about getting one professionaly painted :-)

Jason had taken pole in round 2 so led off round 3 of qualifying. I soon let Rob through into second as I made a complete hash of the first few laps though, only managing to get it together later on in the race as I dropped to 3rd overall. I must say I was cursing my new job at this point, starting to feel the effects of getting up at 4am every morning as the tiredness began to set in and the cars began to look faster and faster, in fact in round 4 it was a little like watching the race in fast forward! Still, I kept it out the barriers but couldn’t improve on 3rd position behind Rob who looked like taking pole off Jason in the last qualifier until he had a problem in the last minute. Fourth on the grid would be Adrian with Sean, Wayne and Jamie filling the other 'A' Final grid positions.

With my new Team Scream 4200’s in the car for the final I was up for having a go at the cars ahead of me and managed to sneak past Rob a few corners into the final as he ran wide, unfortunately he turned me round and turned the rear of the bodyshell inside out as he tried to cut back to the inside line on the corner exit. Still, mistakes happen and Rob was good enough to wait while I got myself facing in the right direction and go back past him. Still, for the second meeting running I was at the back on lap 1, bugger ;-) From then on though it all went perfectly, scripted almost as I caught Jamie and snuck through before getting down the inside of Sean into the hairpin for fourth. Next up was Adrian in 3rd, it took a minute or two to catch him as he’d escaped quite a bit but I managed to squeeze past him into the chicane just after catching him. Right, that was 2nd but Jason was way out in front. Still, I could see I was beginning to catch him although certainly not quickly enough to get there before the end of the race, well I wouldn’t have had Jason not parked it in a barrier with a minute to go ;-) So that was the lead then and I don’t think I’ve ever driven so quick, I’m finally getting the hang of driving a looser edgier car which is definitely the way to go, it was all going so well I couldn’t even bring myself to back off once safely in the lead, just thrashed it till the end! ;-) Jason came home in second with Adrian having a good meeting in third.

We’re nearing the end of the season now, four more meetings to go so it’s looking good for the championship, I knew all I needed was Justin to go back to America to win it back ;-)

Good luck to everyone for the Thrashnalls meeting next weekend, keep the good results coming guys! :-)

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