Never been there before. In fact it's been a while since I went to a circuit for the very first time so it promised to be interesting.
Sadly I didn't have time to do the test day on the Friday. We had tickets for the Olympic rowing for Friday morning (which was fantastic) and then I headed off mid afternoon for the long drag up to North Wales.
I made pretty good time (5hrs) so was there unusually early for me. Time for some of JC's burgers!
So my first time out on this track ever was the RGB qualifying session.
It's a very interesting circuit and you're presented with a stunning view of the coast as you come round the back of the circuit :
The car felt pretty lively. I was getting loads of oversteer coming onto the start straight and the first corner but it felt good. It took me a few laps to start to test the braking point into Rocket which is a 110 degree left hander after a blind crest so pretty scary the first time out.
Anyway, I didn't disgrace myself too much. Ended up with a best time of 1.15.8 which put me 6th in class. Only 0.5s off Paul Rickers which I thought was pretty good for the first time out.
We decided to do nothing to the car set up wise. I was concerned that dialling out some of the oversteer would just mean I understeered through some of the faster corners and make it worse, so I opted to just try to drive it faster!
Well the race was, how can I put this...disastrous.
I got caught up in a first corner incident which, on post race analysis, went something like this. Dave Watson clips the back of Austen, Austen spins into Tim H (and hits him twice somehow!), David Whale dives to the right to avoid them, swipes my front end, bonnet comes right off, taking the throttle bodies with it. Ok and Paul Rickers was momentarily off as well. So I spent the race camped out at marshal post 4, along with Dave Watson.
As it happened, if I wasn't going to be in the race, I did at least have a cracking view of the race from there and was enthusiastically cheering for TG who managed to win the race from the back of the grid.
Here's my video.
So the damage was mainly fibreglass - easily fixable, although all the mounting points were broken so the solution was tie wraps.
Sadly, for me, Race 2 on the Sunday was curtailed early by the tie wraps failing and the bonnet coming off. Trying to take Rocket with no forward vision at all is a tad tricky so I came in before I did any more damage.
Bit of a bugger that. 10 hours travelling for about 3 minutes racing.(not to mention the cost). Hey ho. That's racing I suppose.
Also, the Saturday night barbecue was great fun, and it can't go unmentioned that TG's performance in RGB, winning both races from the back of the grid, and getting a win and a second place in the bikesports in a mildly adapted RGB car, was amazing. It was almost worth being a spectator just for that.
I can also console myself with the knowledge that I didn't have the worst weekend of my esteemed racing colleagues. Austen's weekend was pretty bad, and whilst Bob had a good weekend on the track, I think a 14 hour journey with the AA on his way home must count as the worst weekend's journey ever.
Donington next. No excuses this time. I know the secret. Drive faster, don't crash. Simples.
