Hi everyone,
Just back from my first race meeting, in a Mygale chassis, at Rockingham Speedway, in Northampton. Which to my surprise stayed dry, for my time on the track, with all the weather forecasts prior to the weekend showing rain.
My aim going into the weekend was to finish qualifying in the top 10 and have two top 10 finishes.
I had a hard qualifying session, with a red flag causing a pause to my progress as I settled into the session; at this point I was running 14th. However when the session was restarted I managed to claw some more speed out of the car and up until the last lap was running 10th, being beaten back into 11th by just 1 thousandth of a second. At the end of qualifying I was 11th for race 1 and 9th for race 2, which I was happy with as I felt that averaged out to reach my goal.
I made a poor start on Race 1 from 11th on the grid, due to never making a practice start in the Mygale, as it uses a different clutch system to the Van Diemen, this left me in 12th by the end of the first lap. I then spent the majority of the race fighting, with the likes of, Josh Hill down, son of World Champion Damon Hill, and Nathan Freke, the 2006 MSA Formula Ford Champion. I finished the race despite the fighting still in 12th, which disappointed me, but really showed me the importance of a good start.
Race 2 and this time I made a much better start, with me not losing nor gaining any places. After fighting for several laps, the pack settled down into an order with me up to 8th. I spent the remainder of the race Chasing Down Josh Hill once more, but never making any headway, as when I managed to up my pace so did he constantly maintaining the gap.
This meant that I had kind of achieved my goals, in one way or another, and had learnt about this different chassis and how it should be driven.
I would like to thank the team, JTR and also my sponsors; Superseal, BG Printers, Mobile Telephone Services and Sue-Sew for all their help and support.
