Race Report:
Our last race of 2011 and after some strong results and the car working well recently, we were really looking forward to the meeting. The weather leading up to the day had been amazing, with temperatures reaching 28 degrees. The forecast was for a dry and sunny day, it turned out to be one of the hottest race days we’d ever done.
Tony had setup the night before and me, Matt and Dan turned up around 8am to help prep the car. The queue for sign on and scrutineering was surprisingly short and we were in and out in less than 10 mins.
Qualifying was at 10:15 and the sun was blazing now. After me starting the last 2 races Tony was back in first. He joined the circuit from the pitlane but had a 360 spin warming up tyres before reaching the next corner. The circuit was very slippery. Ooops!
As Oulton is such a long lap, 11 to 12 laps is about all we can do in a 30min practice session. Tony was doing some very good times so I decided to leave him out as long as possible as one of our lap times was disallowed for cutting the 2nd chicane. He did our fastest lap (good enough for pole at the time) on his 6th lap. The next was the in lap as I needed to do the minimum 3 laps to get into the race. He continued to push and had another 360 spin at cascades. We came in and I jumped in to do my few laps. Tony told me how slippery the circuit was and I had a few sideways moments. I had traffic on all my laps but I had enough laps to start to get into a rythum.
4th was the final position from qualifying, we were very pleased with that. We discovered that we had made a small mistake with tyre pressures so decided to correct that and make no setup changes for the race. The weather began to get even hotter. During our pre race prep we found that the engine had been breathing heavily and had spat some oil out. It has taken a thrashing this year and been getting slowly worse. We had a nice lunch and a good chat to our guests from Cliosport.net and started to get ready for the race at 15:15.
Tony got a decent start and was side by side with the number 80 Saxo around the first corner, Old Hall. He dropped behind and went up the inside into Cascades. He left room on the exit as the Saxo was still on the outside but they touched and our door mirror went flying. The Saxo started to spin and collected Tony again, knocking him accross the track and narrowly missing Jerry in the 306.
The car had survived and we were in 4th. By the end of the lap the front 2 had pulled away and that left the #28 Civic in 3rd, us 4th and Ian Collins, in his first race back after a big crash at Cadwell, in 5th in his Clio. The car was running well, Tony able to get close to the Civic a few times but it was starting to smoke and we could smell burning oil as it passed the pits. The engine temperature began to climb to over 100 degrees and Tony had the heater on flat out to try and help cool it. Not pleasant on a day with 29degree weather and in a 3 layer fireproof suit. I hoped it would last the distance as we might be able to jump the Civic in the pits and the leader had a success penalty to take, we were looking at a good result, but was worried we’d get black and orange flagged.
I didnt need to worry as it didnt last till the stops, coming out of the hairpin on lap 7 it lost power. Ian went by and Tony gunned it out of the chicane, it was making a nasty noise and went bang just before Knickerbrook.
So that was it, a dissapointing end to a great season. 3 trophys this year is more than we hoped for so we cant be too downbeat. It was a shame not to end on a high tho. The damage to the car was fairly minor but its getting some mechanical TLC over the winter, along with a new engine of course.
gutted I fucked my splitter parking though
