Too slow at South West Series Round 3 - Plymouth - 28 / 11 / 05

After making the journey to Plymouth in the freezing 106 (French car - crap heater) we prepared the Xray and headed out for some practice. The car felt absolutley awful at first but it looked as if everyone was in the same boat with cars sliding everywhere, it was really showing that this carpet hadn't been used for the best part of a year!

As practise wore on things got a little better although the track was still difficult with it's huge straight and tight infield sections. Adding to this the rear diff which we thought was in a pretty sorry state had really gone, with no spare Russel kindly lent me one for the day, thanks mate! Also an apology to 'JAMIE' who I referred to as 'Lewis' all through last weeks report, no idea why other than I might be losing the plot, anyway, sorry 'JAMIE' ;-)
		The tight turns of Plymouth!

Qualifying

I was pretty pleased to end up second after round 1 of qualifying, especially seeing as I had to start from 7th but fortunatly I managed to get past everyone without too many problems. The car was handling well although the track was still making it difficult to put consistent laps in. The second qualifier was better and after a slight mistake let Mark through I was able to put some consistent laps in, overtaking Mark as he dumped (half charged batteries were never going to help ;-) and finishing in second. Into the third qualifier and the pressure was on now as Mark, Russel and Malcolm got it together and all wanted my second place on the grid.

		I was able to stay a couple seconds in front of them and had the gap under control to retain second until I crashed into the spinning car of Sean as I closed to lap him. By the time the marshal had pulled the back of my bodyshell out I'd dropped to 5th in the heat. Mark finished strongly to take second but both Russel and Malcom made mistakes in the last minute, leaving me still clinging onto third.
Justin checks 7 cells are still in place...well surely he can't go that fast with 6! ;-)

Into the final round and it's fair to say I made a bit of a mess out of this one, myself and Russel swapped positions several times early on in the heat until we eventually settled into a good pace with me just able to say with him. This went on for several minutes until Russel clipped a barrier and I was through, in true celebratory fashion I went on to drive straight into the next barrier and fall behind him again. All this has let Malcolm close back in and this is how it finished, fortunatly my round 2 time was enough to hold onto third place behind Justin and Mark but less than a second ahead of Russel and Malcolm who in turn were followed by Sean and another chap rounding out the 'A' Final, no idea what his name was, sorry whoever you were! ;-)

Final The first few laps of the final were very close with everyone running in grid order. After 4 or 5 laps Justin had stretched his lead at the front and Mark was now beginning to pull away from myself in third as once again the car seemed to lose a little acceleration. I don't know why this happens and quite frankly it's brassing me off a bit now, it's just not good enough so answers on a post card please ;-)

The part that's causing all the problems this week is... ;-)

As a result Russel was now looking for a way past and we had some real close racing for many laps until I eventually nosed myself into a barrier, if that wasn't enough I did it again two corners later and dropped to 5th and although I could close a little on Malcolm it was never going to be enough to catch him so 5th it was at the buzzer.

As we speak the car is again down to a bare chassis, the black chassis screws I ordered over a week ago have finally arrived so they'll be going in for next week. The diffs have also been stripped and a new one is on order from Demon, when you add up the price of 12 Carbide diff balls and the carbide thrust balls you may as well have a new diff. More expense too with a new round spur gear with all it's teeth which should be an improvement over my old one, then there's a few other changes I want to make before next week......I think i'd better go and put all this together, see you on sunday! :-)

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