Rockingham Speedway - 18th/19th July 2009 - Rounds 3 & 4

Back at Rockingham...

After a two year gap from racing at Rockingham we were back.
This track is one of the most physical and was going to put my training into good use.
Practice on Friday was cut to half a day which left little time to set the car up.

Qualifying session on Saturday morning was carried on a dry track and I was down in
8th place. I came in and the tyre pressures were reset and a few degrees taken off
the rear wing. I then started to climb up the grid and finished 5th fastest.

Race One
The start of the race was probably one of my worst starts ever. When the lights went
out I could not stop the rear wheels from spinning even whist changing up into 3rd
gear. I actually thought something had broken and that’s why I wasn’t getting any
grip. It turned out that it was the spinning of the tyres. I lost 3 places by the first corner and needed to get by Chris Willie as quickly as possible if I wanted to stay in touch with
the quicker drivers. Chris held me up for a couple of laps which aloud Jon Gray to open
a 10 second gap. Once I got past him I set about catching Jon and each lap I was pushing as hard as possible and the gap was reducing. On the last lap with 2 corners to go I caught Jon and then he spun in front of me and we both just missed each other which allowed me
to go over the line in 5th place.

Race Two
We set off on our warm up lap. We came round the last corner ready to line up on the grid.
I noticed Mark Harrison had pulled in to the pits which meant there was 1 less person
in front, effectively promoting me to fourth on the grid.
I got off to a great start this time tucking in behind Damien Charveriat, who didn’t get off
to a great start. I was 4th after the first two corners. Unfortunately when I selected 4th gear
it would not go in first time and that allowed Jon Gray to catch me and slip stream past me
going into turn 1. This demoted me to 5th. He opened a small gap on me but then I started to catch him again. Whilst I was planning my move on him Nick Robinson caught me and past
me going into the same corner.
I spent the rest of the race closing back up to Nick who was also catching Jon.
We went over the line split by half a second. I finished 6th after a tough challenging race.

The next Rounds 5 and 6 will be at Castle Combe which will be a new circuit for me as I have never raced there before.