After a wet and windy Saturday, I had my fingers crossed for the bad weather to continue on Sunday, as the Porker prefers the wet conditions, but it wasn’t to be. The sun came out and so did our friends and family, including Faye from work and her boyfriend Billy. 

Tim in action

 

The Warm Up session saw the class leader blow his engine and my two other main competitors Paul Hughes and Jeff Mileham put times in of 55 seconds – a second quicker than me!

 

 

The Practice session saw Jeff stamp a 54.06, Paul a 55.04 and a 55.9 from me, placing me 3^rd in class and putting me through to the Qualifying round.

 

Things went pear shaped in the Final.  I couldn’t get a clear run and the session was full of various accidents, providing numerous yellow and red flags.  All in all a very frustrating session!

 

Jeff posted 54.07 Paul a 55.21 and a terrible time of 57.13 from me.

 

The Super Battle Final loomed and I made sure I was first on the grid.  I drove the door handles off the car and posted a time of 54.90 on lap 3 – Paul then posted a 54.20 for second place and Jeff another consistent time of 54.06 for first place.

 

After a long day I was proud to collect my third place trophy, as well as “Hardest Charger of the day” with a gift voucher and tickets to Santa Pod.  Guess that extra effort in the Super Battle Final paid off! 

Another podium finish

 

What a great day and big thank you to everyone who came along to support me.

 

Roll on Snetterton Oct 12^th the last in the 2008 series.

The swimming pool!

It took some 5+ hours to get there on the Friday night from Hertfordshire, but poor Craig Winstanley couldn’t believe his luck when a 45 minute journey to the track took him two and a half hours, all courtesy of an accident between Junction 19- 23 on the glorious M6!

It started raining before the day started and TA Club Group A (me) went out first to find a swimming pool where the track had been!  Everyone took it cautiously including me, but as each lap went by I found the Porsche liked it and I pulled in a respectable time of 2:00 in the pouring rain which placed me 1st in class.

There were a few spins and offs and unfortunately a couple of crunches along the way, but somehow I found the wet suited very well.  As my Warm Up session came along I was in full swing, pulling a 1:51 out of the bag. 

Lunchtime came and went with bright blue skies and the whole garage and pit area ablaze with the tommy gun sounds of air guns, hastily changing back to dry tyres.  I felt sure it would rain again and was so confident that I went against the professional advice of my race team (my wife and 12 year old daughter, Florence).  So out I went in the Super Battle Challenge, praying for rain.  After the first couple of laps someone went off and we got dragged back to the pits, when it started raining.  I knew I was right!  But I celebrated too soon.  By the time we got back on the track it had stopped and wasn’t really wet enough for my extra cut wet set…

Podium finish

In the Qualyfying race I managed a 1:39:105 which put me in the Superbattle Final, still running 3rd in Class.

I finished the day, tired but very happy with a final lap time of 1:35, where I maintained 3rd in Class.  All that left was the dreaded 5+ hour journey back home…

I’m at Brands Hatch for the next round on 10th August, which is only 45 minutes down the road.  So as long as I don’t have Craig’s Winstanley’s luck, I will be having a lie in!

I ended the day in 2nd place in the Normally Aspirated class.

 

The first practice run ran from 9.00am to 9.20 and I found it quite hard to get any sort of heat into the tyres.  There were 35 other cars on track with all sorts of abilities, so a lot of questionable driving together with some odd circuit lines and overtaking only allowed on the left.