I had a great time, despite the issues.

First lap, and it spat the drive shaft out on the near-side (I only replaced the offside one, as I thought the nearside was longer anyway ). However, upon actually getting to a right hand corner I had never made it to previously (due to the offside drive-shaft problems ), it shat it self and we had to be recovered off track (good old ADAC cover - didn't cost me a penny).

Travelled all the way to Guido's (60 miles) in Mike's RS6 (where I fell alseep and missed going 285km/h five up ) and collected a longer one for the nearside and spent a a while catching up with Guido before returning to fit the shaft.

Luckily there were three of us to do this job, with Kelvin almost bursting a blood vessel while Ryan and I were hammering in punches to line up the holes of the inner TCA to enable the bolt to go through. 90 minutes later, and we finally fixed it. We then went out four-up for a sighting lap and everything was good to go, with no-problems what-so-ever. We did a cool down lap of the outer roads on the circuit and then went back to the hotel to drop people off for a "proper" lap. Pulling up to the hotel, the car suddenly started puffing white smoke and then dropped on to three. SHIT! Checked the oil - perfect, checked the plugs - perfect, checked the water - fuck! A nice coating of oil on the handle of the screw-driver was meaning something terminal. Prognosis so far is, either cracked liner, porous head around one of the valves or a faulty gasket (unlikely to be the latter, as Harvey has only ever seen ONE of these be faulty ever).

Car should be back from it's trips on Wednesday/Thursday and depending on what it was, will be ready for Central Day (unless it is the head, and then I will have to wait for another to be done).

I was then handed the keys of RW's M3 and told that I was now sharing this for the weekend : APs all round, CSL wheels and £2.5k of Intrax suspension - one sorted motor. Not as devastating on track as mine, but after drifting it through Adenau Forst a few times, I could see me getting used to one of these and jokingly made a few comments that I would have to break mine and get a CSL - only to receive text messages from people off the board (WTF ? ), telling me not to a few hours later . The rumour-mill - don't you just LOVE it ?

Unfortunately the abuse dished out by Stevie on the penultimate lap of the day (for the BMW) saw the wheel bearing, lower ball joint, inner TCA bushes and nylon bush inside the damper body fucked. However, before hand, it dished out an 8.14.1 (beating Stevies Evo VI time ). I then took Willie out and had a bit of a "moment" down the Fox-hole where the back-end stepped out strangely while having to adjust the line for a big transit van on track where I wanted to be and then the noticed the wheel bearing noise was getting louder and louder. Not wishing to hand Stevie back a lump of mashed metal with a wheel missing, I knocked into 6th and went sight-seeing .

So the only car to make it back uner it's own steam from our hotel was Charlie's Seat .

We then got a Golf GTi DSG hire car, that Stevie then proceeded to knock out a 9.02 in (easily a sub 9 minute with no mistakes). I decided that despite being offered lots of drives after that, that I would just be a passenger, as I didn't want to get a rep as a car killer .

Thanks to everyone who helped out - you know who you are . See you all in September for a sub 8 .