Rockingham - 23rd/24th June 2007 - Rounds 4 & 5

Rockingham rounds 4 and 5 finally came after a long break.

The practice sessions were a mixture of acclimatising myself with the car again and learning a technical track. My practice stints were shortened due to sickness that didn’t help my preparations at all which made it difficult to get on the pace.

With slight adjustments made to the car I went out for qualifying and was up to 3rd fastest before it was stopped due to Pantania going off in the gravel early into qualifying. Back out and even though I was getting faster I still ended up 5th on the grid for the first race and 6th for the second race.

We formed up on the grid for the first race and I had a reasonable start. Going into the first corner I caught the sight of a car spinning around down the inside of me. I slotted into 3rd place and spent half of the race avoiding John Gray, which ended in him trying to out brake me and then spinning off. That left me driving around for a safe 3rd.

The start of race 2 and starting in 6th place. The lights went out and I had a cracking start and I got up to 4th going into turn 2. After exiting the corner John Gray went wide and I took another place and setting my sights onto Phil Needham who was also catching Keith Baldwin.

I was feeling a lot more confident in the car and started setting some scorching lap times. I was right up the back of Needham and thinking about possible passing opportunities when the pace car came out due to Peter Kalpatrious spinning off.

The gap formed by the three of us was now back to zero again. After two laps behind the pace car and trying to keep my tyres warm the pace car went in and the race was back on and the three of us quickly pulled away from the others again. I had three serious attempts to try and pass Needham and with rain staring to form the red flags came out and the race was stopped due to John Gray spinning off again and unable to get going. So another third which wasn’t bad and allowed me to close up on John Gray in the championship.

Next round will be Anglesey on July 14th and 15th.