Well we made it to Brands hatch for the First Round, but it was touch and go. We got everything bolted together and the engine running the saturday before. The next job was setup on the rolling road. This didnt go well with running problems, so the week was spent trying to solve them. This ment no setup time and no testing.
We headed for Brands on the Friday night thinking we would at least get the car through scrutineering and maybe a few miles under the wheels in qualifying but probably pull the car from the races to save the engine.
The Rolling road sessions had shown the car running very week.
For the test session i bimbled around keeping out of the way, only pressing the large pedal a few times. Even at slow speed the car felt fantastic.
After qualifying the plugs looked ok, so we fitted a lamba guage for the race and entered race 1. For the first few laps i held back watching the guages. everything was looking fine so i pressed on. The engine was cutting at about 4.5k rpm so as long as i short shifted things were fine.
We made good progress and managed to overtake 7 cars, making 3rd TVR only missing out on 2nd by about 12 inches at the line. We also managed fastest TVR lap.
For the 2nd race we started further up the grid, and gave it large from the start. We managed to overtake another 8 cars getting into 2nd TVR spot closing fast on the lead TVR and a high top 10 finish ( not bad from a starting in 28th). Only for me to make a slight mistake into Paddock Hill bend going slightly wide on the entry, this coupled with some understeer put me on the marbles and i slid gracefully into the gravel trap and retirement. We did manage to post another fastest lap before this happened.
So at the end of the day a much better result than we expected when we headed off down te M40. A 2nd in class and 2 fastest laps. It could have easily bagged a TVR win in the second race but it wasnt to be.
With the engine fault traced, some setup and testing time things are looking encouraging for the season.
