Oulton Park 23rd September


Dropped the car off at teatime on the Friday, - its my local circuit so its easy enough to get back to in the morning for signing on. Had tinkered around with the ECU to try and get another 10-12 BHP using another chip.

Arrived in plenty of time to get the car ready, signed in, scrutineering - no problems again..... i like having a simple car, small problem which caused panic for a few minutes - the scruit lost my ticket......

Had to go for a new driver's briefing as I haven't been out on the Foster's circuit layout before, done the long circuit last year... was getting a bit nervous as it seemed to be taking ages and the other qualifiers were out on track already. Made it in time and got the tyre pressures set up etc....

Qualifying
What a disaster, the new ECU and Chip were running like a bag of s**t... no power and it made it feel like the clutch was slipping, was only able to get 90mph flat in 5th, something seriously wrong... went round to the end of session with no temp problems, qualified 29th out of 29.. about 7 or 8 seconds off the pace... 1.29.9 fastest lap - argh

Race
had quite a long wait before race, so changed ECU back what it was before, tested it in the paddock, 6,800 rpm before rev limiter kicked in and power all there up the range - felt a lot better.

Went out at the back of the grid as usual, wound have liked to be one or two rows further forward.... good start, got fairly close to the guys in front for while, then the race was stopped for a red flag, bits of cars all over the circuit, the worst of it at the bottom of cascades and into fosters. Sat on the grid to reform for ages, getting hotter by the minute, decided to save the engine and switch it off, then the damn thing wouldn't start again, left it for 2-3 mins and tried again, thank god it started. Had lined up behind Julian in the Punto (where i should have been after qualifying if i hadn't messed the car up) and along side Andy in the Puma, I have had close racing with both of them in the past so things should be interesting...

Restart went well, and I was able to keep up with Julian and Andy, catching both of them on the straight bits, and getting very close to Julian on some of the corners.
Followed for about 3 laps and then decided that there wasn't much time left so started to push, was gaining approx 1 second a lap on them, then Andy fell off into lodge, and lucky for me he kept it nice and clean and didn't come bouncing back across the track as i have seen others do before.

Was busy chasing Julian hard when I noticed coming down Cascades into Fosters that I didn't have much in the way of brakes, it would appear that I had either cooked the pads, or boiled the fluid, I suspect the pads and they are Ferrodo "fast road" pads and not proper race ones, the disks are standard production ones, and the fluid is 5.1

Anyway, nearly got Julian, he beat me by 2.5 seconds, but I did managed a few laps faster than him... 1.22.4 and I beat Andy in the Puma....

Think Mark has got the class D lead off me by virtue of superior driving and fastest laps. - got to try and get him at Silverstone...


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Last Updated: 01/01/2007 05:43 PM