The weekend started well, Buzz had kindly marked out a spot for our gazebo on the Friday night meaning we had a good spot saved for us when we rolled in about 7:10am. The smart ones amongst you will now be thinking, "hmmm, what time did they leave Lancashire to get there that early?!" Well, I woke up at 2:30am and after picking Mark up we left Lancaster on the M6 at about 3:50am. So an early start to say the least... think Friday nights in hotels might be on the to do list for next year...
Buzz made his grand entrance shortly after us just before 8am. During the parking manouvre he narrowly missed running over Adzy's car (still in hauler box and bag) - mere millimetres it escaped by. Buzz jumps out the car, looks at the situation and says "huh, wondered why the parking sensors were going crazy..." Ha! What an animal!
We then all busied ourselves with getting set up and ready for first practice. The weather at this point was looking to be very nice indeed, we were just hoping it would last the day and maybe the weekend.
We opted for pitting on the field in our gazebo, but the covered bits by race control/the rostrum were equally packed. It was a very busy national, busiest I've been to certainly.
My new bodyshell just hanging about until it was placed gently on the car and the track next time. Notice the new Team Sorex stickers we're required to run this season. I really liked them, others were less convinced.
Practice and heats got underway without any hitches. I was on a reasonable pace in the practices, as everyone was running on old tires. But my decision to try and do the National on the cheap and run old tires for the whole weekend didn't work out for me. You're just too far off the pace. I ended up buying and putting a new set of tires in time for the last qualifier on the Saturday, and was immediately back were I should have been qualifying wise. Unfortunately the two poor runs I had beforehand I never really recovered from, but more on that later.
The weather stayed nice for us throughout Saturday and a good day was had by all I would say. Despite some hiccups along the way I think everyone enjoyed it. Here's some pictures from the top qualifying heat to round off Saturday's report.
Sunday greeted us with inclement weather pretty much immediately. Promptly soaking Mark's chair after he left it out from under the shelter of the gazebo.
It also forced us to put some more sides up around the gazebo creating this fantastic little group shelter between our three gazebos (mine, buzz and some of the guys from Ardent)
When the rain started I was actually out on the track with my dry car, as it was a light misting at that point I continued running. But it looked pretty cool on my bodyshell after I brought it off. Artistic imagery quota filled? Check.
Sunday's qualifiers went ok, I got one more good run in and then decided to give the old tires one more try, resulting in another slower run. Meaning I think I finished up with a 22, 25 and 40 being my best 3 runs out of the 5... not really the consistency I was hoping to start the season with. This put me third in the E final, not ideal but could have been much worse.
Let's round up the Sunday commentary with some pictures of the top modified heats lining up on the grid and going round.
This slideshow has almost 80 pictures in it and was a continuous shot option on my camera. It basically shows the entire A final mod field going round the infamous Mendip sweeper. I can't make it flick through any quicker, so be patient. It's interesting to see all the slight variations in lines round that tricky corner.
Funnily enough I ended up finishing where I qualified - a common occurrence for me recently. Although, given Steve Lissamore was on pole and won the final overall (usually he would be going quick enough to make A finals - so I guess he had a 'not great' weekend too) I didn't mind too much finishing behind him. Not the best result, actually one of my worst in a while, but I enjoyed the meeting a lot. It was good fun to be outside again, despite the bad weather on one of the days. Guess I'll just have to drop this round and do much better in all the rounds still to go. I think I can manage that!
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