I gave my last Blog Post?the title, “Difficult Season About To Get Better” and I went to Snetterton hopeful of a major improvement but I never even imagined how big an improvement there would be.
At Oulton in round 1 and Silverstone in round 2 my qualifying time was a massive and embarrasing 5 seconds off pole, with drivers of the calibre of Stefan Hodgetts, Ben Winrow and Gareth Howell on the grid, this year was always about learning but as I’ve said before you can’t learn from drivers if you are 5 seconds a lap slower. Pre season I expected to start within a second of the front and be challenging for podiums mid season in preperation for a championship challenge in 2011. So I was pretty shell shocked by the end of Silverstone.
At the start of the season my Dad, Lunar Racing and myself were all in agreement with who we had decided would engineer the car this season, the move to the Trofeo was a big step into high profile motorsport for myself and the team so having someone we believed had experience was important to us. This was a huge mistake!
Lunar Racing are now back to running the car totally themselves so we set off for Snetterton with team owner Paul Kneeshaw as Race Engineer and Nigel one of the project’s graduates from last year heading up a team of three new 14 year old?students to actually run the car. The set up that had been on the car for the first two rounds was ridiculous and we were excited to find out where we were now, we were confident that the car would now handle as I expected and we would be able to fine tune it.
Qualifying went ok, I felt comfortable in the car for the first time and was at last able to push it hard so was very frustrated to qualify 6th as I was absolutely on the limit. However how could I really complain when after being 5 seconds off before I was now 1.6 seconds off pole and with the car now behaving normally, I?knew what it needed to improve.
For the first time this season I was able to return to the pits and discuss with the team what we needed and we made a small change to the car for race 1.
Prior to the race we were given strict instructions about running four wheels off and we were told we would get a drive through penalty if we did. I changed my line in order to prevent this and despite the fact that this was now a slower line I went half a second quicker with the set up change. Nobody else seemed to heed the warning and I was the only car not to receive a flag and Stefan Hodgetts, Josh Wakefield, Charlie Butler-Henderson and Paul Smith all received drive through penalties. I finished 4th which although frustrated at being so close to the podium and missing out, I was now just seven 10ths off the fastest lap.
Race 2 was to be more than I could ever of expected, I got an excellent start from 5th and was up to 3rd when Stefan and Ben Winrow made contact which allowed me to move into 2nd behind Ben. I have to admit that being in 2nd I drove for the podium so my lap times were slightly slower but after the season I’d had upto that point I wanted that podium, so I shadowed Ben home, incredibly after 22 laps and 30 minutes I was just 8 seconds behind what a huge transformation!
I have to be honest the podium wasn’t the hardest earnt trophy I’ll ever have on the day but when you take into consideration the season as a whole it feels huge! However many cars are on the grid or what happens during a race to allow people to belittle a podium finish, one thing that is a fact is now I am knocking on the door of the pace of two of the most highly respected and successful tin top racers in the country. Ben was Clio Champion in 2008 and won in the Seat Cupras, Stefan has raced in the BTCC and has won races in Clios and SEATs as well.
We now move back to Silverstone so I am excited to see the improvement we have made for the first time we are racing on a track for a second time so know what we are aiming at. One thing I am very confident of is that this time the gap will not be 5 seconds.
