Guys, Just a little story from our weekend.....
Adam and I (no he's not a gay friend) started racing last year in the Trackday Trophy doing 5 races throughout the year with mainly 4th or 5th place finishes and one win at Cadwell park.
The natural step up this year from novices is into the MSVR Team Trophy which still consists of a two driver race but over a slighly longer duration of an hour with a 2 minute pit stop half way through for the driver change.
I knows it's not a CSL but I'm not quite in the "have enough money" club to convert my CSL into a race car but all the same we are competing this year in our trusty old 328i Coupe (Kylie) that we paid fifteen hundred quid for four years ago......We bought her to start doing trackdays and slowly added the needed stuff until we eventually sprayed her and started her racing.
Back to the glory part of the Title, It was our first race of the year last weekend at Donington park with a double header racing on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday started ok with a lap of 1min 24.5 in Qually which put us second in class 'C' and 9th overal with a total grid of 25 cars.
The car felt pretty good but we were suffering a little front end straighline stability and locking the brakes up too easy into corners so we decided to make a small change and bring in the front toe slighly. Which turned out not to be in our favour.......
The car had much more stable braking in the race but lost it's initial fantastic bite on turn in causing us to get slight understeer and lose a massive 1 1/2 seconds per lap....... We brought her home in third place after the hour safe n sound and picked up the smallest trophy of the day.
We knew that Sunday was expected to be weather from the perfect storm so we decided to stay on late at he circuit and adjust for a wet race in reasonable weather rather than messing about at the crack of dawn in the rain. We reduced the camber and softened it all up and headed off for a well earned pint.
Sunday qually was hilarious....... The rivers running across Craners akin to scene from Jurassic park when the fat bloke lost his glasses. I went out second and found that we had a surprising amount of grip considering the shite conditions and that the car was superbly grippy and stable under brakes. We ended the session in pole of Class 'C' by a second and were in great spirits for the race.
Adam got a great start and made a couple of places up against higher class cars in the early part of the race, slowly pulling away from the other cars in our class........ 30mins in the conditions seemed to ease slightly and it was my turn to take the wheel, After a wet wait on the pit wall I took over with the idea of taking it steady, not pushing too hard and bringing it home. Ten minutes into my session and the rain really picked up with craners deteriating lap by lap..... There must of been about ten minutes to go when a Class'A' 968 Porsche came up behind me wanting to get past, I moved straight out of the way knowing that he's not racing me and that our next competitior was way behind.....I followed him through craners and Aquaplained straight off the track and onto the grass..... Kept the foot in gently and carried on across the grass, through a small patch of gravel and back onto the track......( Nearly fooked it)
Anyway we did finish in first, Got to spray the bubbly and gained a winners cap and larger trophy.
The weeknd was a blinder and a big shout out to the lads that came to lend a hand or watch in the shitty conditions. Next round at Snetterton on the 30th June. Double last years trophies in the first weekend so we are all well chuffed.
Cheers Matty.
