Anglesey 6th June Race 5
Miles of tailbacks and rain like curtain rods followed me back from the mainland and by Saturday morning there was the nasty air of an English bank holiday brewing. The track was wet for qualifying. Wet as in, that?s not dry it?s wet, wet. Lap times were around 10secs off dry testing and some of the ?not so locosters? were fiddling around with special wet tyres. When asked if I would be running wet tyres, ?well, yes of course I am, my car?s been parked outside all night and the whole thing is wet? this didn?t go down too well with the purists but an all time best 11th spot in qualification was my reward and with a second best spot for race 2 in 13th it appeared that my first time out in the wet was not such a bad showing. Pleased with my efforts I repaired to the bar for some rare welsh bit and a bit of a dry out.
The driech drizzle continued thru lunch and after some hand wringing from the stewards, our race was on. Conditions had deteriorated and helicopters had been dispatch to Snowdon to rescue the fell runners engaged in their masochistic footrace up the fell. No such luxury for us and barely able to make out my air filter during the green flag lap, we were launched like herring into the first corner. Unable to distinguish grass from asphalt, either by sight or grip the only method to determine wither you were on track was if you were luck enough to feel the rumble of kerbs before swapping ends. Conditions were marginal at the good bits and after a few quicker laps I finally found how bad the bad bits could be. Whilst happily aquaplaning toward the run up the hill to rocket, I cleared the lee of the hill and was blasted straight into next week by powerful gust of wind. I was actually surprised to see a number of cars barrelling behind me at full gas up the hill. I pressed all of the pedals, pushed all of the buttons and levers however it was now quite clear that I was simply a passenger and the little wheel in front of me was about as much use as an ashtray in a thunderstorm. Coming to rest near the marshals, huddling in their hut, I considered shutting the whole thing down right there. Something that a number of my fellow powerboaters owned up to after the race, my confidence knocked I toured round the welsh countryside trying to remember where the track was and what the view looked liked till someone waved a chequered flag and then we could all go home.
Pulling up in parc ferme the locosters looked like Manx boat people who had been recently pulled out of the Irish sea. Robert Palin was shivering uncontrollably and clearly in the early stages of hypothermia. Matt was doing a creditable impersonation of an epileptic chesire cat but with the warming effects of adrenalin waning, the rain slacked off to a torrential downpour and it was time to slip into something a little less damp. My race suit is normally a bit of a struggle to get in and out of but disengaging the zip the sodden nomex split and slid to the floor like a banana suit and as I sat naked in my steamed up hire car with the heater on full blast, quizzical locals peered in looking for evidence of sheeping, (the local equivalent of dogging I?m reliably informed by the Birmingham Two & a Half). On the upside, I was still alive and despite much circumstantial evidence to the contrary, I had not driven blindly off the headland into the Irish Sea. I had come second last but like the first beast to crawl from the sea to the land I now had a dry tomorrow to look forward to.
