Although I hadn’t really had an opportunity to do much testing in the Abarth, with the weather how it’s been the last few months, what we have done has been mainly wet. So with heavy rain forecast for the entire Easter weekend I was feeling confident.
Friday morning’s testing was dry so for the first time we fitted a set of new slicks and headed out on circuit, with two sessions on the slicks we started to work towards a set up but then the rain came and this time we fitted our first set of new wets. The work we had managed to do at Rockingham on the very old worn wets paid off as on the new wets the car handled superbly, in fact so well we didn’t take part in the fourth and last practice as that was also wet.
Despite all the weather reports saying heavy rain on Saturday we lined up for qualifying with a dry track and hardly a cloud in the sky. The team have told me that they knew my transponder wasn’t working immediately and was giving me the In board from the second time I passed the pits and I failed to see it five times, so I only have myself to blame for not getting my timing sorted early and I was pretty frustrated about qualifying 10th, really not the result I wanted.
Race 1 took place Saturday afternoon in really warm weather so we had to guess at a setup, the race weekend had turned into a test session. I was thrilled with my start passing 3 cars off the line, then passed another that spun at the first corner almost collecting me. I then was handed 5th place later in the lap when pole sitter Ben Winrow went off. I then passed another to get into 4th so the first 3 laps were great. Unfortunately we still had another 75% of the race to go and the handling of my car was going away from me quickly with the car hopping through the corners leaving me unable to get the power on as early as I wanted. Quickly cars started catching me and I found myself reversing back through the field to finish 8th.
My main frustration was with my driving, with this championship and being signed by a dealer presenting me with a massive opportunity I made the?biggest mistake a race driver can make?of letting the thought, “I don’t want to crash the car” get in my head. Trouble is that attitude has only got to be in there for a second and it has an effect. Although I pushed hard and raced well, what I didn’t?manage to achieve all weekend was find the limit of the car, this left me a long way of the pace of the frontrunners. There is a big difference between driving fast and driving on the limit and currently I am nowhere near the limit.
Race 2 took place on Monday and this time I started 8th, I made another good start and by mid race was lieing 5th, unfortunately though as I came up the hill to complete the next lap the car suddenly tried to throw me into the barrier, I just about managed to hold on but then found I had a horrible vibration and turning right was difficult. However everything sounded ok so I slowed down and concentrated on finishing which I managed in 10th place. As I expected when I came in the problem was my left front tyre.
