New car on form for pole at TRAK Indoor Round 2 - 23 / 10/ 05

'I'll be miles off the pace' - That's what I kept telling all the people asking about how i'd get on at the first indoor meeting with the new car. As it turns out that statement couldn't have been further from the truth and from the off the Xray was right on the pace.

Practise With only a short practise session everyone rushed out on track and as a result the practise was slightly chaotic....but also fun! ;-) From the few laps I managed to complete without incident though it was obvious the car was way overgeared and lacking rear end grip so before race 1 we dropped it a few pinions and used additive to sort out the balance.

Qualifying

The first qualifying round went better than expected and I ended up third overall but having got to grips with the car throughout the run I ended up quite pleased with it's handling, although we again lowered the gearing to try and keep the motor cooler.

Into the second qualifying round then and Justin led us away from Mark, myself, Mike and the rest. The top three got away fairly quickly and for the first few laps my car was ballistic but I couldn't make it past Mark and as we approached Sean and John to lap them my car had levelled off to around the same pace as Marks. From my slightly hazy memory I think Mark got caught up with Sean which allowed me to sneak through and once i'd lapped John on the next lap I had a tidy gap over Mark and wasn't too far behind Justin so I kept pushing and tried to keep some pressure on. A few laps later and Justin made a mistake (I know, first time i've seen him make a mistake too!!) and I went past as he got himself pointing in the right direction. With less than a minute to go now I'd lost quite a bit of acceleration but by the time Justin had closed back in on me it was the last lap so I took provisional pole ahead of Justin and Mark.

Nice to see a number 1 back on the car		We sure could use some of these! ;-)

We made a small change to the set-up for the last qualifier which had a good effect and I was able to open a little bit of a gap at the front during those first laps where my car seems so fast. I threw away all that good work by binning it a few laps later, as it was no-one beat my round 2 time so I had pole for the final ahead of Mark, Justin (after we'd managed to steal the straight line that you normally find on his windscreen and replace it with a squiggly number 3 shaped one instead) then Sean and Mike who by his own admission had a shocking qualifying ;-)

Final

So we lined up on the grid for the final, we were away at the second attempt and I had hopes of shooting off into an early lead as Justin tried to pass Mark. Obviously no-one had told Mark the script though and he stuck to my bumper for the opening laps. For the first 2 or 3 minutes I led from Mark and Justin, all of us very close and no-one making any mistakes or contact. All the time though I could see Mike just edging in a little everytime me, Mark or Justin got close to each other. Mark was first to blink and Justin needed no second invitation as he moved to second, a small distance behind me. By this point though at over 3 minutes in my car was starting to slow and my lead was soon gone, i'd lost virtually all acceleration and it was difficult to hold Justin off, or stop him driving straight under me out of the slow corners. A few laps later and the inevitable happened as I caught a barrier trying to take too much speed though a corner to make up for my lack of acceleration. Fortunatly the car landed on it's wheels but Justin shot through, as did Mike who was having one hell of a race. Justin held off Mike to the finish to take a great win while I had to settle for third, disappointed with the result and my batteries but very very happy with the car and such a great race :-)

Theifs! The final note this week goes out to whoever it was who walked away with my extension lead after the racing. I guess someone accidenatly packed it up thinking it was theirs so if you see one in amongst all your gear this week you can give it back to me next week, you theif ;-)

So next week is South West Series Round 1, i'm desperate to win that this year and hopefully i'll have some new batteries to help me do it,

See you next time :-)

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