14.May.2010 Knockhill Pressure Cooker!
KNOCKHILL. Home advantage. Easy points. Don?t you believe it. I knew it was going to be just as tough in Fife as it had been at Oulton and?as it will be at every other round. That is the British GT. It is a strong competition with drivers who have been around the block. They were?always going to get to grips with Knockhill very quickly ? and they did. I had one journalist ask me last week how much I would enjoy winning in front of my home crowd. Winning? We hadn?t even qualified. I am sorry, but I was only interested in points. I know it’s what everyone says, but I didn?t want any extra pressure and I didn?t want to fire up my rivals by saying something silly. Of course it was a buzz. We went from a two day test at the legendary Spa circuit to my home track. It was my chance to show how well as a team we were doing, but it was never going to be a stroll to two wins. The only advantage I had was knowing where the best takeaways are, where to get a good pub lunch, the cheapest petrol and how to beat the traffic jams.
In the end, we came away with a DNF and a second place. We were gutted not to finish race one because consistency is the key to any championship challenge. But every team will have a problem at some point. Hopefully, that is our hiccup out of the way. We have to look at the positives. Ben did a good job in qualifying and I stuck it on second for the second race ? that shows we still have pace in the car despite getting 85kilos in ballast. The organisers reckon it will slow the KTM X-Bow down. It certainly does that, and that doesn?t fill us with joy. But we see it is another challenge to overcome. There is no point moaning about it, we have to find a different?way of getting performance from the car. The weight does hurt our straight-line speed, but give us some space and we can still fight.?However,?a mechanical fault ended our race. In the second race it was a bit messy and I even got a stop-go penalty. But my prestigecarleasing.co.uk team-mate Ben Harvey was in great form. He held everything together in a performance that earned us second place and those valuable points. Ben has come on in leaps and bounds. We spent a lot of time together at Spa and then at Knockhill. We have got to know each other, both in and out of the car, and we are determined to have a laugh. But we are also gelling. Ben is making so much progress and has never been closer to my laps times. And I expect him to keep improving. We will keep working hard as a team. The next round is at Spa. The week before that we will be at the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit for a test. We are determined to grab back some of our pace. We have some things?that we think will work. Then it will be down to consistent driving, having?fun and getting Ben to pay for the takeaway.
