MMCC Club Night

We had a pretty cool track layout at Morecambe tonight, quite twisty and hard to get consistently quick times on. Mind you, now I think about it, what Morecambe track isn't like that?

After some very scruffy qualifiers which were full of little mistakes and unnecessary entanglement with each other Dean and I ended up in the B final with Colin joining us. I managed to break free at the start of the race, but Dean caught up with for the final minutes of the race and he was right on my tail for the final few laps. Coming down the straight on the final lap I gave it a final push over the loop and stopped just short of hitting the wall, confident that I had beaten him. Dean however carried on round the track to the next corner and much to my dismay the computer announced he had won it! I couldn't believe it when everyone watching said the loop was not in it's usual spot and instead 4 feet further round the track! Bit of a rubbish end to what had been a good race, but I guess you win some and you lose some. Even more annoyingly though I then found out it was the last round of the championship (which I thought had finished literally weeks earlier) so I couldn't have 'lost' on a worser week!

I thought for pictures this week we could do a quick Morecambe pit table tour so here we go:

My pit table

Dean

Andy

Mark Carter

Mark Jordan

Kev

Colin & Pete

BRCCC Club Night

I had an eventful night at Blackpool last night. About halfway through the first round my gear diff broke, which was quite an impressive feat in itself. When I took it apart I discovered that one of the pins in the out-drives connecting it to all the planet gear had broken out of the slot in the back of the gear, bent the shim and subsequently chewed up the case and gear. Fortunately I had a spare gear diff, save the out-drives, so I used various bits from that to fix it all.

I then went out for the second qualifier only to break one of the spool out-drives after a few laps. I didn't hit anything really, honest, must just have been wear and tear. Anyway, I fixed that as well and tentatively went out for the final qualifier, in desperate need for a finish to keep myself in the A final. I pulled off a solid result and was comfortably in the A, where I finished in my usual position, behind Danny, Andy and Damien. Ho hum.

Cotswolds National 2011

My first national of the season started well enough, I went out for my three practice sessions and the car felt really good... surprisingly so, seeing as I had run out of time to do anything to it in preparation. I was feeling pretty good about life until I went to get my tires together to get them marked up for scrutineering, as I went to reach for my wet tires I realised I had left them and the wet car they were bolted to in my other hauler bag back in Manchester. Fantastic. You utter wally.

Needless to say that put a little bit of a downer on the weekend after that as we were all but guaranteed to get a very wet Sunday. Nevertheless I kept my head held high in spite of the circumstances and put it in some reasonable runs on the dry and sunny Saturday. All of them were within the top 40 if memory serves, which is about where I would hope to finish these days.

I do enjoy driving on the Cotswolds circuit, it has a nice flow to it and the surface is a joy to drive on compared to some of the other tracks in the calendar. The club guys all did a great job of presenting a beautifully maintained circuit and great facilities for the weekend.

The highlights of the Saturday for me though came from Mr Cottom, when he decided to don some ski goggles to protect his delicate eyes from the wind on the rostrum. He looked like some sort of home-made wannabe superhero, bless.

Andy was also kind enough to entertain us off the track too, he had a sticker on his shell which was just begging for a bit of sharpie editing. I, of course, was kind enough to oblige.

As predicted Sunday emptied the heavens down on us and after trying to share a wet car with Adzy didn't work out (he drove it through a small lake by race control in his first round which promptly killed it before I could use it) I marshalled my two remaining quailfiers before deciding to pack up and head off home early. This of course means I missed out on all the contorversy which followed and as I understand it, the situation has now been left as final results = the final qualifying positions. Which might not be too bad a result for myself with the three reasonable results I got on the Saturday.

All in all, not my greatest of racing moments but the usual banter in between races and on the Saturday night made it for me. So thank you to all my fellow pit mates for that.