25/04/2018
Hello everyone!
Sorry for keeping quiet recently - have been quite busy! As you may not know, the first race of the 2018 MaX5 Racing Championship was at Pembrey last weekend, and what a race weekend it was!!
Here is a quick session by session report of the weekend;
Practice was a good starting point for me - using older tyres to get their use out of them! At the end of the session I was 4th in Class A, about a second off the pace with a 1:16.9s.
Onto qualifying where we now have new tyres, the brakes have been bedded in, and the weather was lovely! I went for it, and amazingly I managed to do a 1:15.3s time, 1.6s faster than my practice time! I qualified on pole for the first race of the season, result!
By this point it's Sunday, and the weather had closed in on us - rain prior to the session meant a drying track, but our setup choice was spot on. Pole position was on the wet side of the track, meaning traction was very limited from the get go - I slide in behind car number 8, Matt Tidmarsh. A yellow flag and safety car bunched the pack up after another car in Class B had an unfortunate driveshaft failure - that was soon resolved for the next one! From the safety car, I hold behind Matt, and make my move around 4 laps into the race. And from there, I get my head down to escape the fighting behind, finishing my first race in the MK3 in 1st!!
As this was my first race in a MK3 coming from a Class B MK1 car, this raised a few eyebrows! We were instructed to change our ECU in the car with another car to ensure that it is rule-abiding. We did that, however the other car did not like our ECU, so it was swapped back. But when that was swapped back into my car, the same thing happens, and we nearly miss race 2 because of the key deciding to, essentially, unpair itself from the ECU. Thanks to Mission Motorsport however, they were able to clear all fault codes on the car, and get me out for race 2 - thanks guys! The car will be sent over to Autotronix to ensure that the car is running a legal map.
Now for race 2 - this was dry conditions, and the entire track was dry too, meaning that I could get a good start off the line. From start to finish I held my position and again, managed to escape the position fighting behind me. In the end I finished 1st in class again, by 13 seconds no less, and 3rd in class.
This weekend definitely showed me how to handle the MK3 properly in race conditions. Now, can I maintain this good start? Hopefully, however it will not be easy.
Hope you enjoyed this write up of the weekend, the videos with THECARGUYS.TV will be out in due course.
Also a big thanks to my sponsors THECARGUYS.TV for enabling me to be here today, doing what I love, doing what I do best - racing cars, and proving people wrong!
Here's to Snetterton next weekend!
