So, I missed Friday testing due to work commitments and ended up arriving at Silverstone late on Saturday afternoon.  The journey had been extended somewhat by an errant Take That concert at the Milton Keynes bowl, but I took solace in the fact that if you’re going to be stuck in a traffic jam it may as well be one composed of semi-naked 20-30 something women.

 

Saturday evening was the usual beer, barbecue and braggadocio that tends to precede a TRR/TSSC race meeting and it was good to see Andy Vowell back from rebuilding his car and also Kev and Diane Hadfield (who are not racing with us this year, but entered this race in the Invitation class).

My Sunday morning practice was crap.  I was rubbish and for at least half of it couldn’t remember where I was going having never driven the International circuit before.  According to my lap-timer my fastest lap was the last one I did and that was about 10 seconds off the class pace.  Must try harder.

 

Our race, despite being well attended, had been doubled up with a Morgan race.  This meant that there were 43 cars on the circuit and there was a lot of grumbling about not being able to get a clear lap in.  Yeah, that’s where my 10 seconds went too...

 

Once out on the grid though things were looking a bit better, I’d remembered where I was going and made quite a good start getting the jump on Dave Styles and had my sights briefly set on Simon Congdon.  I say briefly because he disappeared soon after that and I was stuck chasing one of the Morgans.

 

Dave and I were having quite a good race. Good in the sense that I was in front and a race because a lot of the time I nearly wasn’t.  That was until about the final lap when in a moment of derring do a plucky Morgan driver who was in an awful hurry decided to take a dive down the inside of my car.  Except the inside of my car was on the kerb and there wasn’t much space.  So there was the inevitable crunch, spin and slide into the gravel.  

 

He was lucky enough to be able to use my car as a brake and avoided the gravel trap, so off he sped.  The marshals had a good try at pushing me out, but by then the race was run.  So another DNF.  

 

Good fun though, up until that point.

 

p.s. For those who don’t know Morgans are the sort of cars you buy if you like bobbing up and down at the Last Night of the Proms or think that Henman’s ‘really got a chance’ this year.