Didn't have time for the update before I left, in the end!
I left on Friday about 12pm from home and Croft is nearly 180 miles. I had meant to be away earlier, I think I encountered every farmer from here to Croft on the way!
I arrived at 4.30pm, got the car unloaded and set about changing the brake piston dust seal which the car had set on fire at the last meeting! That took all of 5 mins and it was back to the hotel for a few drinks (non alcoholic!), dinner and bed. That was unsuccesful as my room was on the towns main street, so lots of shouting etc. Then at 4am they started to set a Saturday market up. Qualifying would be fun in this state!
I hadn't driven Croft in 3 years and last time was in my old XR2. So everything would be a learning experience for me. We had 15mins to set a good time and going on previous ST times around Croft I hoped for a 1min 41 second lap.
I did this with a 1:41.867 lap, 2nd on the grid missing out on pole by 0.037!! More amazingly the 3 top ST's were all within 0.067!
I knew the races would be close but for Race 1 on sunday I elected to keep my used tyres on (i had brand new ones in reserve). At the start the advised 20 second delay between the lights going out for the XR2 start and the flag start for ST's seemed about 5 seconds too short. This unfortunately caught me unawares and I made a really poor start. I dropped to 3rd then throughout the race really struggled with understeer so couldn't do much about the leading two.
Fastest lap was 1:42.458 which I was dissapointed with. I felt I should of gone quicker than qualifying.
Race 2 and guess what, yep put the new slicks on the front. I also had a play with suspension settings and tyre pressures to try and rid the car of understeer. I made a good start, if not slightly better than the driver in 2nd place and got by him at turn one. We had a really good battle throughout that allowed the leader to stretch his legs but then he was collected by a spinning XR2 allowing us through. At the next corner I took the lead of the race for all of the start finish straight before I lost it again!
My car was really over-steery feeling, especially at Sunny In. But I quite liked driving it like this! The two ahead were battling together and eventually on the last lap I dived by when the car in front ran wide at Sunny In. I then ran wide entering the next corner and thought I had lost 2nd but I managed to hold on, despite a huge whack on my bumper than pierced a hole! Fastest lap was a 1:42.106.
Going into the weekend there were 2 points between me and the championship leader, now there is still two. Moving ahead was the aim but maintaining the gap is good, far better than losing ground. We have 6 races over 3 weekends left at Knockhill to decide the championship, next rounds on the 14th August!
Here are my videos and some pics of the damage.
Race 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40rdEE-dwQI
Race 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPxDkjtLvKk
In the paddock at Croft:
Big black rubber is from contact in race 2. This mangled my air intake and I think lost me some straight line speed:
Hole right through my stripes!
I also whacked the front wing with a tyre corner marker, knocked the wheels out by 1 degree!
